Updating the design for Minnesota State University Mankato in a way that didn’t remake the entire website.
Big ideas. Real-world thinking. Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU) — the second-largest university in Minnesota and a crown jewel of the Minnesota State network of universities — understands what it takes to succeed.
Which is why when MSU came to Blend for their new site refresh, we were excited and proud to be on board — not only for the opportunity to make them look great, but because we had proven our work over the past decade as past partners.
Audience-centric design.
Full-site redesigns begin with research, discovery, and a lot of interviews. For MSU, this meant connecting with everyone from incoming freshmen to the parents of past students. Breaking these audiences into tidy groups is not easy, which is why Blend focuses less on strict personas and more on general “archetypes,” subsets of behaviors that represent a user pathway rather than a whole person.
With audiences and outcomes determined, Blend was able to work with MSU to help determine the best way to address user-focused pathways and answer key questions: how do parents influence their kids’ decisions?; how do potential research partners find their way to the right departments?; how do trailblazing students — those whose parents did not attend university — navigate the complexities of university admissions?
This focus on key audiences helped shape the design — to the point that MSU even published our “audience and outcomes” findings live on their site!