The University of Rennes entrusted us with the redesign of its course directory, an essential tool for high school students, university students, and professionals retraining for new careers. Our goal: to clarify and streamline the user experience by rethinking the information hierarchy and optimizing the navigation flow.
The challenges of the project
The project aimed to address three major challenges:
- Clarification of the offer: Allow users to easily find information and highlight the training programs.
- Facilitation of applications: As the directory is a key registration tool, it should simplify the pathway for future students to apply.
- Internal tool for the university: Provide teaching staff with a tool they can make their own to better showcase their programs.
The previous site suffered from a lack of information hierarchy, making navigation difficult for users. Thus, the main challenge of the project was to restructure the site to provide more clarity. We therefore redesigned the overall architecture to enable students to easily and quickly find relevant courses and information with just a few clicks.
A secondary but equally important challenge was content management. To ensure consistency and overall site quality over time, we implemented a role-based system that facilitates site administration by both the university's central body and the program coordinators.
Our scope
- UX design
- UI design
- Implementation of the Elastic Search engine
- Automation of training course PDF sheets
- Streamline content management for university teams.
Integration of the site into the University of Rennes' site factory, managed by Aegir, and transition to Drupal 10
As part of this project, a major technical challenge was integrating the developed solution within the University of Rennes's website factory, managed by Aegir, and migrating the sites to Drupal 10.
Aegir is a tool specifically designed for Drupal. It allows for easy creation of Drupal sites using installation profiles, which are pre-configured site templates tailored to specific needs. With the announced end of the Aegir project, we have modified it to extend its use, especially with Drupal 10 and php8.
Thus, the University of Rennes benefits from this technical contribution: it uses our Aegir-Drupal10 patch to progressively upgrade all its sites to Drupal 10, a strategic operation scheduled for production deployment in March 2025.
Rethinking the user experience
We worked to provide each learner with a user journey tailored to their needs. To achieve this, we aimed to centralize all useful information for students and simplify their access to it through an optimized approach in terms of ergonomics, information hierarchy, and content readability.
Several stages of work allowed us to achieve this goal:
- Analysis of existing user journeys by our UX designers.
- UX benchmark: identifying best and worst practices.
- Co-design workshop for the training search journey.
- Wireframes: producing structural mockups of the site (without layout/styling).
From there, we designed the site's graphic mockup (UI design) based on the wireframes and the university’s graphic charter. It should be noted that the project scope did not require an advanced artistic creation, but rather alignment with the existing visual identity. The goal was to ensure visual consistency while optimizing the time and resources allocated to the project.
A training catalog combining clarity and comprehensiveness
For the training catalog page, we opted for an accordion system, thus combining comprehensiveness and clarity. This feature allows the user to obtain a concise overview of the available courses, while still offering the option to expand the sections that interest them to access more details.
A clear and straightforward presentation of the training offer
In the same vein, for the presentation of the courses, we have implemented a clear hierarchy of content through a navigation sub-menu. This allows us to structure the information in a logical and relevant way, making it easier for users to understand and access the different sections.
Automate the generation of PDF training sheets
We have integrated a feature that allows automatic generation of PDF sheets from each course description, offering users a downloadable version of the key information. Although this option already existed, it previously required a tedious manual entry of the content. Now, everything is automated, making the process much faster and more efficient for administrators.
We have also added a unique QR Code for each course on the PDF sheets, making it easier to share information on mobile devices.
Setting up the ElasticSearch search engine
To provide users with quick and intuitive access to the information they’re looking for, we needed to choose a powerful search engine.
After analyzing our needs, we ultimately chose ElasticSearch, which is at the heart of the directory’s navigation. Our work consisted of implementing and refining this engine, by integrating advanced features such as:
- Term autocompletion;
- Handling synonyms and grammatical variations;
- Sorting by relevance to improve search results.
Simplifying the back office for contributors
The University of Rennes wanted a targeted publishing and unpublishing system for certain fields, for example to correct an incorrect course description without unpublishing the entire page. However, the budget and time allocated to the project did not allow for this request to be met. Faced with this constraint, we proposed a cost-effective and efficient alternative to stay within budget while still largely meeting the client’s needs: the implementation of the Content Moderation module. This module allows you to configure a workflow between different defined roles: Supervisor, Central Service Contact, Department Contact, and Administrator.
Thanks to this solution, program managers, professors, and other contributors can freely enter content related to their courses. The central body, meanwhile, can supervise everything, thereby ensuring the overall quality and consistency of the site.
Towards the success of your digital project: contact us!
We warmly thank the University of Rennes for the trust they have placed in us throughout this project.
If you have a similar project or needs related to digital transformation, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team is at your disposal to discuss your objectives and support you in your digital projects.
- URL: https://formations.univ-rennes.fr/
- Project dates: January 2024 - September 2024
- Scope: UX design, UI design, Drupal development.
©Cover photo Dom Fou
University of Rennes
For more information, you can consult our case study on the subject.
The University of Rennes' opinion on the redesign of its training directory
We chose bluedrop.fr to lead the redesign of the University of Rennes’ course directory. Thanks to the development teams’ technical expertise, we were able to deliver a tool that perfectly meets our expectations within the set deadlines. The project ran smoothly, without any issues or tension, which is a testament to the professionalism and patience of those involved in this project.
