Student Doctor Network
Taking a non-profit beyond success with an informed brand and strategic website
Project overview
Quick Facts
Project Focus
Content Strategy & Redesign
Integrated Platforms
WordPress, XenForo, MediaWiki
Key Services
Brand Identity, UI/UX, Development
The challenge
SDN had outgrown its existing website and software, leading to a complex content structure across multiple subdomains. The core challenge was completely reworking how users discover content while seamlessly integrating three distinct software platforms (WordPress, XenForo, and MediaWiki) for a cohesive user experience.
The solution
We led a brand strategy process to define user stories and differentiation, followed by a strategic redesign with custom iconography and hand-drawn elements. We developed a proprietary system to bridge the three disparate software platforms, combating performance issues with API caching and job queueing.
The results
The new platform provides a seamless, performant, and cohesive user experience across all content types, ensuring SDN remains in-brand, scalable, and adaptable as their resource library continues to grow.
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Project background
Overview
Strategic Content Structure
Student Doctor Network started to outgrow their website and software. They needed a redesign that could provide an intuitive and rewarding experience using their resources. With their content growing quickly, they needed to create a strategic content structure. We led with an abbreviated brand strategy process that set up the website design work, informing us of their brand values and differentiation. This enabled us to recommend the right user experience.
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Strategy first
Userflow
Gauging the Needs
With such a large resource site and complex content structure, content strategy was instrumental in defining the right touchpoints for their target audience. Student Doctor Network struggled getting the right content to the right users. We opted to have a landing page for each medical field included in the user flow to specify relevant articles, resources, tools, and interviews. We aimed to craft a better user flow through content discovery, page structure, and user-friendly copywriting.
Establishing Structure
Wireframe It Up
For Student Doctor Network, wireframing was a must to retain the simplicity and consistency of the visuals. During an in-depth content strategy process, we were able to define their target audience personas, examine the resources, regroup field-specific content, and revise page-level content strategy across the site. From content strategy to wireframes to page design, we brought their brand system into the UI/UX with illustrative creative flourishes. Key requirements defined were:
Ensuring they remain in-brand for years to come.- Defining their user story.
- Completely reworking how their users discover content so it is simple and methodical.
- Identifying necessary brand elements such as custom iconography and illustration.
- Producing wireframes for essential views.
- Translating it all into a simple, user-friendly visual design, and then building it.
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From planning to visual
Page Redesign
UI/UX
The key to the website design was adaptability. The new platform needed to scale well as the company continues to grow and expand its library of resources. Student Doctor Network had a variety of media types: blog articles, interviews, podcasts, resources, forum posts, and more that we had to contend with. That meant the visuals needed to be flexible in structure while feeling approachable and reflecting how simple, yet powerful the website is to use.
Custom Iconography & Illustration
Visual Language
We crafted a custom set of icons for Student Doctor Network that would help identify their chosen medical fields and carry that story across the website and supporting media materials. Along with a custom icon set, we incorporated hand-drawn elements throughout the website to better communicate a lighthearted and approachable visual language.
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Development
Bridging the Gap
Software Integration
A unique challenge was bridging three softwares: WordPress (blog), XenForo (community), and MediaWiki (Wiki articles). We developed our own system, giving us full control over the logic, data structure, and extensibility, but requiring considerable development time. We were attempting to pull data from WordPress and MediaWiki into XenForo, which heavily affected performance. We combatted this by adding API request caching and queueing large processing tasks into XenForo's job system. This 'development magic' allowed us to create a seamless, performant, and cohesive user experience across multiple software.
Project Background