Bryant University Redesign

Bringing Campus Energy to the Digital Experience

bryant.edu

Seeing beneath the surface of a successful business school. Intentionally interdisciplinary.

  • In-Depth Interviews

    Climb inside the world of the user with structured interviews that bring their unique voices into the design process.

  • Competitive Analysis

    See where you shine, where you don’t, and how to leverage that intel to fill the most important gaps in your experience.

  • Taxonomy Research

    Avoid internal bias with quantitative research methods that let users create the most intuitive navigation groupings for their needs.

  • Experience Strategy

    We evaluate internal perceptions, user goals and best practices to find that “special sauce” that drives an actionable roadmap for your future experience.

  • Sketches

    When it comes to bringing ideas to life, the pencil is mightier than the keyboard. And much faster.

  • Prototypes

    If a picture is a thousand words, a high-fidelity prototype is the entire story. Bringing the user experience to life with a fully-interactive artifact is a low-cost, high-value way to iterate without the investment of code.

  • Responsive Design

    We design for the future on today’s devices. Every element is considered for every size display to create an ideal experience for all users.

  • Visual Design

    Through imagery, messaging, color and typography, we deliberate over pixels, consistency, readability, contrast, accessibility and creativity.

  • User Testing

    To get decisive, actionable findings, we let users explore without artificial restrictions. We design our prototypes to accommodate this need, as a final product would.

  • Functional Specifications

    Converting your designs into well-documented specifications with functionality, flows, layout, and styles ensures that no developer has to guess what comes next.

  • Design Systems

    Good design will translate to a good design system — and vice versa. Build your brand with well-defined styles and components at the heart, and it will grow and breathe well.

The Challenge

For more than a century, Bryant has been known as a leading 
New England business school. Today, the University is a vibrant community of young leaders who thrive in an highly intentional interdisciplinary environment where they can explore their 
purpose and passions.

But you would have never known this by visiting Bryant’s old website, which was filled with staid photos, not-so-inspiring academic program descriptions, and beautiful campus buildings that were oddly devoid of student life. Even the site’s grey-and-plum color palette missed an opportunity to celebrate the beloved Black and Gold of Bryant’s popular athletic teams and their devoted fans 
(Go Bulldogs!).

The challenge seemed deceptively simple: find a way to make Bryant’s digital presence reflect its energetic and inspiring 
campus experience.

Image showing mobile screens
Intuitive navigation and dynamic layouts with a mobile-first approach

Our Approach

We began by going straight to the source, conducting in-depth interviews to understand how prospective students and parents 
were experiencing the site. What found that their target audience simply couldn’t understand what made Bryant unique or why they should attend.

The user experience didn’t help tell the compelling Bryant story. 
Site visitors were constantly “pogo-sticking” back and forth between search results and drop down menus and individual pages, on the hunt for answers about Bryant’s diverse offerings.

The greatest sentiment we heard came from the University community itself. The site didn’t reflect the incredible “quad” atmosphere at the school. Bryant is a small learning community by design, but it’s big on energy—and no one saw this coming through in the digital presence.

Working closely with the internal Bryant team, we began a full-scale make-over. First, we oriented the user experience around the user—organizing content by user groups, whether they were undergrads, grads, or professional education students. Next, we infused the site with youthful campus energy. Image galleries were designed like social media feeds, with vertical portraits and quick video clips. And we moved away from the grey and plum and embraced the Gold and Black, showcasing Bryant’s winning basketball, baseball, and golf teams in all their full-color glory.

Most significantly, we brought Bryant’s interdisciplinary learning model to the fore. At Bryant, students are required to take minors outside of their Business major. Many of the parents we interviewed found this model valuable since they knew from their own experiences how often career interests change during college. Exploring a minor (or two) in the Liberal Arts or Health and Behavioral Sciences provides built-in flexibility—exposing students to different ways of thinking, learning, and doing that benefits them far beyond the office suite.

Visually, we wanted to bring this all to life with student, teacher, and staff testimonials from across departments and schools, exploring their diverse interests and accomplishments in authentic videos, photos, and quotes. We built a flexible testimonial design system that the Bryant team used to populate the site with well over 200 individual stories that helped prospective students truly understand what Bryant was all about.

Image showing Bryant student life
Making sure the site showcased the many facets of student life (the images used for this case study were generated using Midjourney)
Image showing additional screen designs
Leveraging authentic video/photo & data visualizations to eliminate the need for dense text layouts

The Results

Today, the Bryant.edu site is on par with the best business schools out there—while exposing all the rich opportunities that surround its celebrated business curriculum.

But we think Eric Meier, Director of Creative Services at Bryant said it best. “Collaborating with the ZeroDegrees team on the Bryant University website redesign was a fantastic experience. Their ability to conduct thorough user research—both internally and externally—and seamlessly integrate our feedback resulted in a significantly improved final product. The on-site workshops which they led, guided our institution through a collaborative process that earned full support and approval from our community. Additionally, the ZeroDegrees team developed a comprehensive Figma-based design system to support implementation, maintenance, and future growth. This modular, long-term solution empowers us to scale the site as needed and adapt to evolving needs across our broader web ecosystem.”

New User Sessions (YOY)

34%

Collaborating with the ZeroDegrees team on the Bryant University website redesign was a fantastic experience.

Their ability to conduct thorough user research—both internally and externally—and seamlessly integrate our feedback resulted in a significantly improved final product.

Eric Meier BRYANT UNIVERSITY Director of Creative Services