The challenge
When the time came for Cambridge University Press to update the online homes of their academic content they made the decision to develop a completely new platform, and asked us to ensure that it would deliver a world-class user experience.
Established in 1584 Cambridge University Press have been publishing content for over 400 years. Their online academic platform is now home to millions of pieces of content. The plan for the platform was to integrate the content from two existing separate platforms; our job was to create a single, easy to navigate and consistently excellent user experience.
The process
We implemented a full User Experience process built on detailed research that had been undertaken by The Press. Personas were developed for the four core users of the platform, user journeys and user stories developed to explore requirements for the platform and then wireframes used to define the user experience, test and iterate it. From that foundation, visual design was used to develop the user interface.
The result
The UI puts the emphasis on the utility of the site, making sure that the visual language is consistent, that navigation has sufficient visibility and calls to actions, buttons, features and labels are all clear. This includes the presentation of essential information users require to understand what content they have access to. This includes features like a custom HTML view which provides a simplified presentation of content to support easier reading on mobile devices, a behaviour that is becoming increasingly common within the user audience.
“Congratulations with the launch of Cambridge Core! The new design website, its ‘look and feel’, and the functionality, all make for a tremendous improvement.”