Marking the launch of the new Yale-NUS website

2022 heralded not just the start of a new year, but also the launch of the brand-new Yale-NUS College website on 17 February. The long-awaited revamp of the College website took a year to complete from kick-off to launch, involving many different members of the community along the way.

Overseeing the revamp was the project team, which consisted of Manager (Website Revamp Project) Keri Lim and Senior Web Developer Paul Tay, assisted by Executive (Admissions and Financial Aid) Evannia Handoyo. Excited to get started on this monumental project, the team worked together with a Steering Committee comprising senior leaders from various departments across the College. “All hands on deck”, as the saying goes, was an understatement. The Steering Committee was involved in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) workshops, design, prototyping presentations, evaluating detailed content audits, and refining the proposed information architecture. This helped the team to firm up the desired framework and identify key needs across different departments and internal stakeholders to realise them through the new website.

With a keen awareness of users’ existing challenges, the newly launched website aims to provide an easy and attractive navigation experience, showcasing our strong College brand and ethos. Echoing this, Associate Dean of Students Cory Owen, a Steering Committee member in charge of the College life section of the website, shared, “We were excited for the opportunity to refresh the student life pages to capture the vibrancy of our campus community. In particular, since we’ve had so many new initiatives over the last few years (e.g. the Resilience and Success in College course, our residential curriculum, and the creation of the Student Accessibility Support team), this was a perfect opportunity to showcase all of the ways that we support our students.”

The new website also enables the College to streamline the user journey by consolidating content from various microsites in the old website into a cohesive and enduring whole. Boasting clear user-centred design features, it showcases strong chevron elements and feature blocks that display the official College colours. One can experience user-friendly navigation through a standard global navigation menu present throughout the website and the introduction of quick link menus for sections that pique interest. Dynamic content such as stories, events, and profiles of faculty, students and alumni are also featured prominently on all sections of the new site, with apposite search and filtering features across the faculty directory, news, stories, and events section to enable visitors to find content at the snap of a finger. SEO-friendly features are also intuitively present, with proper population of link descriptions and relevant metadata.

Associate Professor of Social Sciences (Sociology and Public Policy) Anju Mary Paul worked with Manager Lim to revise academic content for the new website. According to Assoc Prof Paul, one of the highlights was the creation of a more standardised look-and-feel to allow visitors to navigate easily from one programme to another so as to explore the College’s academic offerings. She added, “This meant reviewing existing content and seeing if there was new information about the College’s curriculum that needed to be updated on the website, but also thinking about ways to make the organisation of the information more user-friendly and intuitive.”

Besides enhancing navigation to existing content, the new website also features a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion page, which highlights ongoing initiatives and provides information on intercultural engagement opportunities and accessibility resources for the entire community. Assoc Dean Owen said, “We hope this will serve as a landing page for our community to see key areas of focus as we continue to expand our efforts in creating a diverse and inclusive community for faculty, staff, and students.”

The website revamp project definitely garnered extensive involvement from the Yale-NUS community. Senior leaders in the Steering Committee guided the strategic direction of the website, while staff from different departments designed webpages and revised content. Yale-NUS student associates pitched in by assisting various departments with content uploading. Acknowledging the tight timeline and massive scale of the revamp, Senior Web Developer Tay noted that the College’s core values, such as care, inclusivity and respect for others, as well as mutual support across the project team were critical in overcoming challenges while making desirable progress. Throughout the project, members of the community shared different views and perspectives respectfully, which helped the team to reach a consensus and move the project forward.

With the new website launched today, many are looking forward to a positive, engaging and refreshing experience for our viewers. Assoc Dean Owen said, “I hope that visitors to the new site will get a clear view of how multifaceted our approach to student support is and how many resources are available. The new design is engaging and dynamic which reflects our own community’s personality.”

Chiming in, Manager Lim shared that the website revamp had been an exciting project to work on, giving her many opportunities to know the College and the community on a deeper level. She said, “I am glad that we can leverage on the website revamp to leave a strong digital presence and legacy for Yale-NUS College.”