Designer
Hub EduX website
Hub EduX is an EdTech hub, created to foster startups in that field. It is a joint inniciative between PUCRS, Tecnopuc and other leaderships. I worked as both co-coordinator and webdesigner in this project. The hub activities started in August 2021, and we mainly focused on its strategy, and prospecting partnerships and sponsors. After the internal launch in December, we focused on the online presence by creating a website.
Scope: Hub EduX activities
Duration: 2 weeks (from February 7th to 21st)
Team: Gabriela Birnfeld Kurtz, Carolina Eichberg, Silvio Langer.
My role in the project: Co-coordinator and webdesigner.
What is the Hub EduX?
Hub EduX emerges in 2021 from meetings between the Colleges and Social Units of the Marist Network, as well as the Dean of Graduation and Continuing Education at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul and Tecnopuc.
The Hub's goals are:
- Provide powerful spaces for the collective creation and construction of solutions in education.
- Identify opportunities for improvement in the learning experience of students and faculty.
- Generate and attract startups and companies in the area of EdTechs.
- Develop innovations for the education sector.
I worked as both a co-coordinator from August 2021 to February 2022 and as a webdesigner. In this session, I will mainly focus on the website.
The challenge
To create a simple website to showcase the Hub's opportunities to all the players involved.
The challenge here was to think about a structure that was easy to fill with information and did not depend on content feeding all the time, since the team was small, and they did not have much time to deal with it.
Other important thing was having a clear architecture that would guide the user through what the Hub does, since it is a new innitiative in the University.
A contact page with a form to attract investor and startups was also a must for this website.
The time constraint was also a challenge, because I was two weeks away from starting the University's leave, and had to finish this task before I left. The rest of the team involved helped giving opinions, testing and proofreading the content.
Step 1 - Model Driven approach
Since we had limited time and team, I had to choose a Model Driven approach. I gathered references from the other Hubs that were already established at PUCRS/Tecnopuc, so I could understand what were the essential features for the website. These were the references:
Healhplus Hub - It has a very simple approach, with only two pages: the home and login. It helped me understand that it is important to have more than that amount of pages, because I felt lost browsing the content, and had a hard time understanding what the hub stands for. However, I really liked the call to action in the front page, and tried to do the same at our project.
https://healthplus.galileu.io/
NAVI Hub - The website is more complex than the former, with 7 items in the menu. It was the main inspiration for the Hub EduX's website, but I figured that the "News" page was not necessary for our project, also because the team is small and they wouldn't have time to feed this section.
Celeiro Hub - The information architecture was a good inspiration, especially on how to arrange the content. It has a very evident contact page, which I thought would be important in our project. The branding, however, was not as developed as the former ones, and it was something I tried to pay attention not to do at Hub EduX. I made sure the branding was recognizable and memorable.
See the websites screenshots below:
HealthPlus Hub
NAVI Hub
Celeiro Hub
HealthPlus Hub
Step 2 - Information architecture
The EduX Hub's operation is based on 5 different types of services that connect EdTechs to various partners. You can click here to see all the details. We also had to be easy to contact and needed specific forms for startups that wanted to connect with us. Since it is a new endeavour, the about and case pages had to be there too. With that in mind, I made the following sitemap (with the original titles in Portuguese):
I focused on less content as possible, with a structure that already followed users mental models. E.g. the home page being the first item and contact the last. The about page was the most important at the moment, since it is a new endeavor, so I choose to put it as the second item in the menu.
Step 3 - Website layout and programming
I made all the layout and programming on Wix, and used Copyright free images and pictures provided by Tecnopuc's Communication Department. All the content was written by me. The home page relied on a strong CTA focused on attracting startups:
The first sentence is: "We develop innovative solutions to qualify teaching and learning", stating what we do as a Hub. The second one is a question: "Do you have a startup or idea in the field of education?". This one helps the user to know what need we are fullfilling. The button reads: "Discover how the EduX Hub can boost yout EdTech", and it takes the user straight to the latest edict, so they can enroll in the program.
CTAs were a very important concern in this project, since we want startups and partners to enroll. All the buttons and call to actions were carefully tought to work as shortcuts for the users. The video tour below presents all the website.
All this project was done in 2 weeks. I can see places to improve, such as image quality and some places where the images distort more than I wanted them to. I also did not have much time for SEO settings such as adding keywords and alt texts, so these would be the next things I would do if I had more time to work on it.