mStoner and TerminalFour were hired to redesign the SUNY website to better tell SUNY's story, raise its brand profile, and showcase what it offers. They created two sites - suny.edu for prospective students and system.suny.edu for faculty and staff. Key challenges included building a homepage that satisfied many stakeholders and conveying SUNY's positive impact. Solutions included feature storytelling, a lean information architecture, and a shared backend data ecosystem between the sites. The results unified SUNY's 64 campuses while reflecting stakeholder input.

1. RE-IMAGINING SUNY.EDU
mStoner
Thursday, 16 October 2014
Presented by: Fran Zablocki, strategist, mStoner
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Project Partners
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MSTONER’S ROLE
Strategy
Information Architecture Development
Responsive HTML/CSS Development
Usability Testing
Content Development
Analytics
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TERMINALFOUR’S ROLE
Implementation
Testing
Training
Support
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CORE GOALS
1. Tell the SUNY story more compellingly
2. Raise the SUNY brand profile
3. Showcase the depth and breadth of
what SUNY offers
4. Meet the needs of both internal and
external audiences
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1
CHALLENGE
BUILD A HOME PAGE THAT
MAKES A MILLION PEOPLE HAPPY
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SUNY
State University of New York
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2nd largest state education system in
U.S.
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64 campuses
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500,000+ current students
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100,000+
faculty and staff
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Tons
of prospective student applicants.
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1
SOLUTION
BUILD TWO HOME PAGES
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Suny.EDU
for prospective students and
external audiences.
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System.SUNY.edu
for faculty, staff, &
administrators.
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2
CHALLENGE
CONVEY THE POSITIVE IMPACT
THAT SUNY HAS ON THE WORLD
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2
SOLUTION
PARALLAX
FEATURE STORYTELLING
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3
CHALLENGE
MAKE KEY INFORMATION AND
TRANSACTIONS EASY TO USE
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3
SOLUTION
LEAN, FOCUSED INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE
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We minimized the number of paths
that users could take. We didn’t want
to overwhelm them, we wanted to
present them with just the most
important pieces of information and
actions.
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3
SOLUTION
OFF-SCREEN AND HIDDEN
NAVIGATION INTERACTION
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The ‘Now at SUNY’ drawer
introduces off-screen, sidebar
content as a companion to the
parallax experience.
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The ‘Super Footer’ houses a
great deal of information, but
keeps overall screen real
estate minimal.
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4
CHALLENGE
ALLOW SHARED DATA AND ASSETS
ACROSS SUNY
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4
SOLUTION
A COHESIVE BACK END DATA
ECOSYSTEM
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OPEN SUNY
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RESEARCH FOUNDATION
FOR SUNY
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T4 DATA
ECOSYSTEM
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OPENSUNY.EDU
SUNY.EDU
RFSUNY.ORG
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By using a shared data structure and
TERMINALFOUR back-end, all three
sites can share and publish from the
same asset pool.
This includes news stories, data points,
photography, media and search results.
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4
SOLUTION
DATA-RICH FEATURE STORIES
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Predictive content strategy was used to
introduce related stories and articles
on the Features Page template.
This behavior emulates modern online
newsroom best practices.
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RESULTS
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50. “I’m most proud that we rolled out a result that really
reflected so many people’s input and ideas, yet still
presented one, unified State University. We are 64
campuses strong, but there is no question at SUNY.edu
that we are one system.”
David Belsky
Director of marketing and creative services at SUNY
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Further Resources
mStoner Blog Posts on the project.
SUNY.edu case study.
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THANKS! QUESTIONS?
Fran Zablocki
Strategist
fran.zablocki@mStoner.com
www.mstoner.com
(585) 678-1169
@Zablocki
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