Transforming a university’s online experience

Challenge

As one of the world’s top art schools, the Royal College of Art (RCA) thinks differently, attracting people who want to absorb knowledge and bring about radical change. But its website wasn’t living up to this daring vision.

Chaotic and unclear, students were struggling to access the information they needed, content didn’t drive engagement, and prospective applicants were put off taking that next step. The RCA needed a game-changing solution — a new digital experience worthy of the institution’s prestige and the talent it draws. We set about redesigning an AA-compliant, accessible site with sophisticated design at its core.

Solution

After a comprehensive content audit, competitor and comparator review, and user and stakeholder interviews, we developed core areas of the website to inspire, engage, and guide students as they interact with the RCA.

This included designing templates and flexible components to support the site’s crucial Research, Knowledge Exchange, and Innovation sections. We took an agile approach to project delivery, with sprint planning, reviews and retros, and daily scrums, to ensure optimum organisation and transparency.

Our modular approach was influenced by the school’s brand positioning: ‘Radical Traditionalism’. We designed a suite of functional building blocks to construct pages. But we intentionally offset type and image alignment, rejecting conventionality. While accessibility comes from switching up the main body font, clean typography, and large, immersive imagery.

This flexible, scalable solution was centred around the user experience. It opens up the width of the canvas, creating new breakpoints to make it more responsive across all devices.

“Beyond’s team were extremely skilled and had the variety of expertise needed to deliver fully on our requirements. They were also willing to go the extra mile where needed and, as a result, our new page templates are stunning and have been very well received.”

^{Emma Bayne
CTO and Head of Digital Delivery at RCA}

Outcomes

With prospective student enquiries growing by more than 300% in the first recruitment cycle after the website launched, the website’s impact is plain to see.

An accessible, scalable design with a straightforward user journey has been highly effective for the RCA. Not only has it improved the digital experience for the current crop of students it’s also attracting the change-makers of the future.