Harvard College

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/ About the project

Harvard College had recently evolved the visual language of its student recruitment materials and needed its digital presence to move with it. The challenge was to bring that new expression to the website without the time, cost, and disruption of a complete redesign.

The project became an exercise in intentional evolution. Rather than replacing an established platform, selected parts of the experience were redesigned to create greater visual impact, improve usability, and give Harvard College more flexibility to communicate student life, admissions, and the broader college experience.

/ Credits

Client:

Harvard College

My Role:

Design Lead / Product Designer

Services:

Product Strategy, UX, UI Design, Design System

/ Year

2024

/ PROBLEM

Harvard College needed its website to reflect a newly evolved visual language while preserving a digital platform that students and internal teams already knew how to use. A full redesign would have introduced unnecessary cost and complexity, so the challenge was to identify where design changes could create the greatest impact while maintaining the existing structure, functionality, and content workflows.

/ SOLUTION

The experience was refreshed through a focused set of redesigned and newly created components rather than a complete rebuild. These components were designed to work alongside the existing system and integrate directly into the CMS, allowing the Harvard team to switch between traditional and updated versions without rebuilding pages or re-entering content. The project also expanded the platform with a dedicated editorial experience, giving Harvard College greater control over how it tells stories about admissions and student life.

/ RESULTS

The iterative approach delivered a visibly renewed experience faster and with less disruption than a traditional redesign. More importantly, it created a flexible foundation that Harvard College could continue evolving internally, combining existing and new components, adapting pages over time, and publishing richer stories directly through its own platform.

/ PROJECT OVERVIEW

The project started by identifying the parts of the website where relatively focused interventions could change the perception of the experience as a whole. Rather than redesigning every template, attention was concentrated on high-impact components including navigation, interior page heroes, student stories, FAQs, quick links, social content, and other elements that shaped how prospective students discover and understand Harvard College.

That same thinking extended beyond visual design. The new components were built to coexist with the existing CMS architecture, giving the content team more control without creating additional operational complexity. A new editorial experience also allowed Harvard College to publish media-rich stories directly on its own site instead of relying primarily on external Harvard platforms, turning the refresh into a foundation for more independent and expressive storytelling.