Unite universities around a shared digital ecosystem.
Overview
Ellucian, founded in 1970, is a global leader in higher education software with more than 65 products that support campus management. The products are used by faculty, administrators, and students.
The company has expanded through acquisitions since its start and now has a large product range. However, the look and experience of all of those products varied greatly, making it confusing for users who were accessing several products to accomplish their goals.
We partnered with Ellucian’s leadership for more than two years, leading strategic and tactical projects to reimagine the overall customer experience across all 65+ products.
We redesigned multiple flagship products and united all digital teams around a shared design system and process.
With our “start with one product” strategy, Ellucian was able to launch the new design within six months and have an immediate market impact while still working on additional product redesigns. They leveraged this new identity in marketing and sales touchpoints to reposition the company as modern and design-oriented.
The process and accessibility improvements and reimagined user experience led to greater efficiency, faster deployments, and more revenue. Faculty, administrators, and students now access all Ellucian products through a single interface.
What We Did
Vision for transformation
New standards team
New design process and governance model
New design system for white-label products
Large number of product redesigns
Outcomes
4
X
Faster deployment for Ellucian
18
MO
To redesign and deploy 25+ software systems for Ellucian
1
New design system and governance model for Ellucian
16
+
Product teams supported enterprise-wide
3 Big Takeaways
Start with the product that has the most opportunity
Have a solid strategy for rollout
Build a foundation for personalization
1.
Start with the product that has the most opportunity
Our approach to creating a new design system is to start with one product. For Ellucian, this meant redesigning their flagship ERP product, Power Campus, first. We explored three different directions, with new navigation and functionality, that could be applied across the product portfolio and tested them with users to get qualitative and quantitative feedback. Our templates and components served as the foundation for the new Ellucian design system and were coded in React to ensure WCAG 2.1 accessibility compliance.
2.
Have a solid strategy for rollout
More than sixteen teams leveraged and refined our design system to transform Ellucian’s other products. Teams had six months to meet phase 1 requirements (navigation structure, fonts, colors, and icons) and a year for phase 2 (full adoption of new components). We worked closely with the standards and products teams to answer questions, integrate user research, train designers, and streamline communication and delivery by aligning designers and developers in sprints.
3.
Build a foundation for personalization
Our design system is used by teams across all enterprise products and enables universities to customize their software while still meeting WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.
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