Envisioning a new look for Agnes Scott’s digital campus map that is inclusive, accessible and connects with our campus community.
PROJECT DATE:
Spring 2024
YOUR ROLE:
Customer Service designer, Graphic designer and copywriter
PROJECT OVERVIEW:
Located in Decatur, Georgia, Agnes Scott is a private liberal arts college with more than 1,000 undergraduate, post-bacc and graduate students. Since 1889, Agnes Scott College has empowered Scotties to dream big, pursue their academic passions and claim their place as leaders in our communities, workplaces and world. Agnes Scott is an inclusive community that celebrates its rich diversity and innovative global learning curriculum. The redesign of the campus map website includes accessible design, modern look and layout, highlights sustainability, and improves navigation across campus.
THE PROBLEM:
While the Agnes Scott campus map layout is relatively the same, the website map is out of date and isn’t mobile responsive. Its present state design includes the college’s former logo, and brand colors, building locations with tiny print and has not kept up with campus changes and construction. Beyond listing out the campus buildings, there’s not much personalization as to how the content is organized. As a stop-gap, the college’s Maps & Directions webpage integrates a link to Google Maps to help visitors find the college. However, this step, along with the outdated campus map fall short of delivering the personalized information students, prospective families and visitors need.
Some of the critical map features missing from the present map include:
- Labeling all accessible parking lots, not just the four primary visitor lots
- Labeling accessible building entrances and walkways
- Dining: the map makes finding dining locations challenging for students
- Pointing out student services
- Highlighting athletics facilities and other areas of interest
- Up to date information on campus construction and changes to make navigation seamless
Beyond being a gateway to Agnes Scott, a campus map serves as a powerful support tool for prospective students and families, visitors and the community. Now more than ever, students are choosing Agnes Scott because of its innovative liberal arts experience that fosters diversity, inclusion, social engagement and global learning. The college needs a campus map that keeps up with its growing student body, expanding graduate programs and evolving campus.
THE SOLUTION:
Exploring a college campus as a prospective student or on Move-In day is not only an exciting beginning to your first four years on campus, but it’s also stressful. In the image above, you can see the current campus map on the website. It’s downloadable as a PDF and is offered in a print version. While it covers the basics, it’s limited in what information it conveys and does not reflect the current state of the campus.
What happens if a student suddenly breaks their leg and needs to find accessible routes to class or a new staff member needs help finding where the Alumnae Relations office moved to? Currently, that information isn’t readily available via the campus map. By updating Agnes Scott College’s campus map, it’s possible to make sure everyone is included and has access to reliable up-to-date information.
Redesign Research
To understand the best path forward with this redesign, it’s vital to understand what role campus maps serve in addition to helping students, staff, faculty and visitors get to know the campus.
- Visually show students the place they’ll call home for four yearsby helping show students where campus buildings and student services are in context with the local community.
- Help with accessibility by playing a major role in showing accessible entrances, accessible parking.
- Showcase to the college’s current and future sustainability efforts— a point of pride for Agnes Scott College.
- Make new employee onboarding easy. A digital campus map helps new employees learn the core areas of campus, employee parking locations and key office and meeting locations.
- Improve wayfinding for everyone. As the campus changes, wayfinding is essential for the community to move around campus easily and safely by integrating emergency call box location, construction hazards and more.
Experience Journey Maps
Keeping these key items in mind, I took time to consider who our campus users are and how a redesign of the campus map can serve their needs by creating a Present State Experience Journey Map in UXPressia. I took some time to consider the current map experience through the eyes of the persona, Khloe King. Khloe is a first-year student at Agnes Scott College. After breaking her foot during the spring of 2024, she had to quickly figure out how best to get around campus from her dorm to the dining hall and to class.
As you follow Khloe’s journey through the Present State Experience Journey Map, I was able to consider what steps she took to view the content, how she engaged with the existing map information, what emotions she felt along the way, and how her negative experience made her feel about her situation and the college.
Before creating my prototype in Figma, I used the information gathered through the Present State Experience Journey Map to create a future state map. The future state follows Khloe through the same journey as before, but this time the campus map includes accessibility features including accessible building entrances and construction hazards to help her avoid problems and find the quickest and safest route from her residence hall to the dining hall. Instead of feeling frustration and anxiety, Khloe felt anticipation, joy and confidence that she could successfully navigate campus on crutches and help friends who may be in similar situations in the future.
Prototype
With my campus map redesign, users will be able to navigate across Agnes Scott’s beautiful 100 acre campus easily. The new campus map includes icons to make finding a campus building, bike rack or main entrance effortless. Breaking the buildings and landmarks into categories personalizes the campus experience, points out student services and highlights points of pride.
In addition to the updated map, there’s a link to Google Maps satellite view so that users can see what the campus buildings look like in real time and accurately measure travel time between locations. Users can also visit the college’s Office of Sustainability page to view the college’s efforts, take a tour of the arboretum and learn more about Agnes Scott’s green buildings.
In addition to the campus map redesign, I included an Accessible version of the campus map. This map helps users navigate safely across campus using wheelchair accessible pathways, accessible building entrances and parking, and get updates on campus changes that could impede their routes. From here, users can access the Office of Accessible Education to learn more about the services offered to them by the college.
THE RESULTS:
Every journey begins with a map, and at Agnes Scott, every map leads to greatness.
Helping students find accessible entrances to a building, finding the best place to park and the closest dining options is crucial to ensuring they have a memorable and life-changing college experience. Overall, my main goal for this prototype was to strengthen the connection between a prospective student, current campus member or visitor to the college by creating a personalized, easy-to-use map. Most importantly, I wanted to blend the redesigned map seamlessly with Agnes Scott’s existing web design and help the map serve as an advocate for the college. Updating the campus map brings Agnes Scott’s incredible campus to life by enabling users to feel more in control of their experience and continue to engage with the content throughout their time on campus.