Background

While working on the Core Properties team within Indiana University’s Digital Campus Design and Infrastructure sector, our team focused on enhancing digital properties across the university. We collaborated with various departments to ensure brand and experience consistency across products and campaigns. A significant part of this work involved designing and developing campaign landing pages for different university initiatives. However, the development process for each landing page was often complex and time-consuming, creating a heavy lift for our team and our partners in marketing and brand management.

To address these challenges, I took the lead in simplifying the landing page creation process, aiming to streamline workflows, increase consistency, and reduce the demand on the Core Properties team.

Research

Objective: To understand the needs, challenges, and goals of the various teams involved in campaign development and to identify ways to simplify the landing page creation process while maintaining high standards of design, accessibility, and brand alignment.

Interviews: To gather insights, I began by identifying key stakeholders across Indiana University who were regularly involved in campaign creation. These stakeholders included team members from analytics, accessibility, marketing, creative, and brand management. My goal was to capture a holistic view of each team’s workflow, pain points, and needs for an optimized landing page process.

• Interview Process: I led one-on-one interviews with each stakeholder, asking open-ended questions to explore their roles, objectives, and challenges in the campaign development process. I encouraged participants to share specific examples of past campaigns, along with suggestions on what would make the landing page creation process more efficient and effective for their teams.

• Key Insights:

  • Complex Workflows: Many stakeholders reported that the existing landing page creation process involved multiple handoffs, extensive customizations, and varied design standards, leading to inefficiencies and inconsistencies across campaigns.

  • Accessibility Concerns: Team members focused on accessibility expressed concerns that accessibility standards were sometimes overlooked due to the high volume of custom development work.

  • Brand Consistency: Brand managers emphasized the need for consistency, as custom-built pages often deviated from Indiana University’s established brand guidelines, resulting in inconsistencies in user experience and visual design.

  • Desire for Reusability: Many stakeholders desired reusable templates or components that would allow them to create campaign pages quickly without sacrificing quality or brand alignment.

Based on the insights gathered from these interviews, I compiled a comprehensive research document outlining each team’s needs, challenges, and suggestions. This document became the foundation for developing streamlined landing page templates and best practices documentation.

Journey Mapping: To further understand the specific steps and pain points each stakeholder encountered, I developed journey maps that visualized the process each team member went through when creating a campaign landing page. The journey mapping process included:

• Touchpoints: Identifying critical moments in the campaign workflow, such as initial content creation, design reviews, accessibility checks, and final approvals.

• Pain Points: Highlighting areas where delays or misunderstandings commonly occurred, such as inconsistent design approvals or last-minute accessibility adjustments.

• Opportunities for Streamlining: Journey maps revealed specific stages where reusable components, standardized templates, and clear documentation could significantly reduce workload and improve consistency.

The journey maps helped illustrate the end-to-end experience of creating campaign pages, allowing me to identify where new templates and documentation could provide the most value to each team involved.