Admissions Website
4-5 Months
Senior Product Designer
For prospective student
Prospective students struggled with fragmented information spread across multiple UTSC and university-wide sites. Program discovery was unintuitive, admission requirements were unclear, and the existing navigation did not match how students searched for information.
For the organization
UTSC needed to:
- Increase application volume, improve yield (students who accept their offer, reduce melt (students who accept but later disengage)
- Establish a stronger, more distinctive Scarborough identity
PROJECT SCOPE
- Desk Research including Material Review
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Content Audit
- UX Audit
- Analytics Analysis
- Define User Types & Goals
- Strategic Recommendations
- Content Mapping
- Information Architecture
- Low-fidelity Wireframes
- A/B Test
- Tree Test
- High-fidelity Wireframes
- A/B Test, sentiment test
- Interactive Prototypes
- Deisgn System and Guideline
UX RESEARCH
We interviewed three key stakeholders to uncover core needs, pain points, and opportunities that informed the redesign of the UTSC Admissions website. These conversations highlighted clear opportunities for the redesign:
- Prioritize a powerful program finder and clear, scannable program pages.
- Focus resources on high-impact areas: IA, program discovery, accessibility, and reusable components.
- Strengthen content to showcase program value, career outcomes, and real student experience.
We also completed a detailed content review to understand inconsistencies and opportunities for consolidation.
Based on these findings, we developed a guiding document outlining Strategic IA, navigation improvements, and key design recommendations. These insights formed the foundation for the new IA and overall design direction.
The primary user groups include prospective students, current students, parents of prospective students, and guidance counsellors.
Here are some of the most important goals we found.
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Easily and intuitively find information on programs and/or areas of study that interest me
- Search and filter programs by areas of interest, prerequisites, admission averages
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Review career and employment prospects after graduation
- Verify program differentiators (co‑op, reputation)
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Apply to a program (via a UTSC link going to OUAC)
- See the entire application process and all deadlines at a glance
PAIN POINTS
1. Fragmented program and admissions information
- Program exploration and admission requirements are scattered across multiple pages, making it hard for users to find what they need.
Review the user journey to identify the most critical tasks and reorganize content around those needs.
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Solution: Redesign the information architecture around key user journeys, consolidating content and optimizing navigation and program search.
2. Complex, inconsistent navigation and page structures
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Too many sub-menus, duplicate navigation items, and UX heuristic issues; templates for admissions/academic sites are inflexible.
- Solution: Simplify and restructure the site’s IA, introduce a clearer UX framework, and create flexible, reusable templates for admissions and academic content.
3. UTSC is perceived as a “second choice” to the downtown campus
Solution: Reframe the brand within U of T guideline yet highlighting UTSC’s distinct strengths and differentiators to build a stronger, independent identity.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The previous structure made it difficult for users to locate key information, so we redefined the first-level menu labels and consolidated lower-level pages. High-priority sections such as Programs, Applying, and Finances were elevated to the top level to match how users naturally search for information.
These decisions were validated through guerrilla testing with real students, ensuring they could understand the structure, infer where information should live, and successfully locate the pages they needed.
The results provided significant insights into the clarity and structure of the website's navigation, which were instrumental in determining the final Information Architecture (IA).
LOW-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
Through multiple rounds of user feedback and iteration, we refined these wireframes to determine the most intuitive structure, content placement, and decision pathways for prospective students.
HIGH-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES AND PROTOTYPES
Selected Design
User Testing
We then delivered a comprehensive set of flexible, reusable templates and design components, along with production guidelines that gave U of T’s internal team a clear foundation to build out the remaining pages.
Desktop prototypes
Mobile prototypes
I recommended shifting to an 8px-based system and introduced a new typescale text styles with atomic design system approach to improve usability and visual consistency. Despite tight time and budget constraints, the client approved this direction, enabling us to deliver a more flexible and future-ready design foundation.
Because the team was not familiar with design systems, I also created an onboarding guide, annotation guide, index with jumplinks, and clearly separated style and component pages so designers and developers could easily adopt and maintain the system.
&Reflection
The results showed up in the experience: stronger engagement, a smoother navigation flow validated through tree testing, and clear positive feedback from both stakeholders and users. In the end, we delivered a more intuitive, scalable Admissions journey that better supports prospective students and aligns with U of T Scarborough’s long-term vision.