Campus is rapidly increasing the number of majors, degrees, and certificates.

At ACES, we used a basic list of programs. This was fine when we could put all of our academic programs under their appropriate academic department.

However, the pandemic and shifting incoming student expectations forced higher education to shift and offer more skills-based, flexible, and professional development opportunities.

ENTER CERTIFICATES!

User issues:

Decision paralysis – too many options to choose from
No filtering or sorting options
No general ‘search’ option
User has to expand each item to read a short description
Not enough information to compare programs
Once expanded, the “Learn more” buttons take you off the main website creating confusion
Confusing online experience = increased workload on admins to respond to questions

We created a new Drupal content type that users can filter, sort, and explore all of the options ACES has to offer.

Allow users to explore their opportunities by filtering to see a smaller set of options
Mobile friendly first, then allow for larger screen expansion
Keep it concise and minimize the number of options for assistive technology to tab or read through.