NU Graduate Programs

Comparing programs, without needing an advanced degree in patience

graduate.northeastern.edu

We consolidated ten websites into one, so it’s easy to follow, compare and decide.

  • In-Depth Interviews

    Through deep-dive interviews we bring users’ unique voices directly into the design process, surfacing the real behaviors and the motivations behind their actions.

  • Experience Strategy

    We evaluate internal perceptions, user goals, and best practices to find what makes your experience worth having. Then we turn it into an action plan for what comes next.

  • Taxonomy

    Using a mix of open and closed card sorting, tree testing, and first-click studies, we build an information architecture people can navigate with confidence.

  • Visual Design

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

  • Responsive Design

    We design every feature and flow for every screen it could appear on. The real test isn’t the device, it’s whether every decision still makes sense no matter how someone’s viewing it.

  • Prototyping

    If a picture is a thousand words, a high-fidelity prototype is the entire story. Testing with one gets us past hypothetical reactions and into real behavior, the kind of feedback we can actually trust. With AI-assisted prototypes, we go even deeper, real data, real interactions, insight we couldn’t get any other way.

  • Usability Testing

    We ride-along as users navigate digital experiences while trying to achieve their goals. Sometimes we ask probing questions. Sometimes we just observe. Unearthing friction early costs a conversation. Catching it later could cost the business.

The Challenge

Northeastern University offers prospective students a wide range of graduate study programs, from accounting to law, online and in-person, in Boston or at one of their many suburban satellite campuses. Unfortunately, all these options were lumped together in one web site that was essentially a long laundry list of hard-to-understand titles with no way to understand what made them different. 

Making the experience even more challenging, when students clicked into a program, they were sent off to one of nearly a dozen school websites to figure out what was there—with no easy way to find their way back. 

To help create a new frictionless and compelling prospect student experience, Northeastern called on ZeroDegrees.

Comparing programs, once an arduous exercise of opening multiple browser tabs, was made easier and customized
Comparing programs, once an arduous exercise of opening multiple browser tabs, was made easier and customized

Our Approach

We started by getting to really know the graduate student mindset. To get oriented, we conducted dozens of stakeholder interviews to understand the current state and what an ideal state could look like. Then, we held 1:1 in-depth interviews with prospective students to unearth how older learners made their educational decisions, and the key evaluation factors they looked for along the way. By looking outside-in and inside-out, we were able to align on a solid strategy for a radically new approach.

Having users organize the many programs into categories that made sense to them was key to creating a taxonomy that resonated
Having users organize the many programs into categories that made sense to them was key to creating a taxonomy that resonated

We ran taxonomy exercises that made it easy for users to identify the programs they were looking for. We built a full CMS to pull all the disparate content from all the graduate school sites together into a comprehensive, consistent, well-organized whole. We designed new program listings that branded each to make them more distinct. We created faceted search tools that let students easily select the criteria that mattered to them. And we made it easy to compare your options—presenting your selected courses in an easy-to-scan, side-by-side view.

A modernized homepage focused on telling the program story in an immersive way
A modernized homepage focused on telling the program story in an immersive way

Students could now dig as deep as they wanted, exploring program overviews, admission’s requirements, the course curriculum, experiential learning opportunities, faculty profiles (with a custom-built CMS for that, too)—and even student outcomes. The real-world ROI of grad offerings came into clear focus. And all this was possible, without ever leaving the Graduate Program’s site.

The new site enabled users to go wide and shallow or narrow and deep—or anything in between no matter their device of choice
The new site enabled users to go wide and shallow or narrow and deep—or anything in between no matter their device of choice

The Results

After extensive development, design, and QA, the Grad site is now the #3 most visited in the university’s ecosystem (out of a thousand or so), and mobile traffic is up 69%. But most importantly, this foundational project led to a long, collaborative partnership with Northeastern.

Organic Traffic

66%

Leads/yr

128%

Coversion Rate

80%

Our partnership with ZeroDegrees has been invaluable

…in our quest to make broad improvements to the transactional aspects of our digital landscape. They’ve helped us build beautiful, user-friendly, and highly functioning web products while ensuring our students are the ones driving the design through qualitative research and user testing.

Christine Celli, AVP of digital experience, northeastern university