By Angela Young
Trinity Times Correspondent

Trinity Washington University graduate student Winnifred Berry was pleasantly surprised when she logged on to the school’s website earlier this semester, noting her encounter of a new look she found colorful and more inviting. 

“It gives a sense of community, friendship, and staff and student connection,” Berry told Trinity Times. “It really captures the distinct parts of the school, such as various department majors, school activities and events.” 

The new Trinity website – launched at the end of March 2023 – has been met with overall approval, with the homepage being lauded for its contemporary design and easier navigation. This is just the beginning of a broader overhaul of the university’s website, said Timothy Russell, associate vice president of Creative Services at Trinity.

The March update was phase one of the website makeover, Russell said, with another phase coming later in the year.

In comparison to the previous website, users can expect the fully completed site to be faster, work better on a mobile device, have more intuitive navigation and create a focus on audiences – such as prospective students and people learning about Trinity for the first time, he said.

“We hope to offer similarly simplified navigation to our current student and staff audiences when we redo the “My Trinity” portal,” Russell said. “There is a new one using fresh images and video. We are actually organizing several photoshoots in the next two weeks to get new photos and video now that the campus is green, and the weather is nice.”

Ronique Jones, an enrollment support specialist in Trinity’s Office of Admissions, marveled at how user friendly the new homepage is and said the updates offer prospective students visiting the website information that is not imbedded, making it easier to find. 

“The new look is very eye catching and, of course, I love our Trinity colors,” Jones said. “In comparison to the previous website, I prefer this one better because of the cleaner look, the interactive videos and aerial views. With views of the campus life, you feel like you are right there. Just watching it makes you feel like you are part of it.”  

The three-dimensional look is a welcomed change, she said.

The navigation and organization of the old site was the main complaint administration officials heard from faculty and students in the last few years, Russell said, “and we agreed.” 

Over time the menus and structure had become unwieldly as new sections were added and many offices maintained their sections of the website in different ways, leading to a confusing user experience, he said. 

“Creative Services hopes that the new design inspires offices to revamp the actual language and content of their sub-sites,” Russell said, “to make things clearer and reduce unneeded clutter and verbiage.”

Trinity President Patricia McGuire, the deans of the university’s colleges, the provost, the Office of Admissions and members of Academic Affairs all sat on the initial committee that focused on phase one of the website project.

The university’s administration understood it was time to retire the old website, considered cutting-edge when it rolled out in early 2019. 

It was always the plan to revamp the website this spring, Russell said, adding that the project was done entirely during the first few months of 2023, with planning in January and the application in February and March. 

“This was an extremely ambitious timeline, requiring the Creative Services team to work many weekends and long hours on phase one, which is just the starting point for the larger project of redesigning and reorganizing the entire Trinity website,” he said. “It sets some design directions and entails a lot of structural work behind the scenes to support new and future functionality.” 

This sort of project usually takes six months to two years at larger universities, and many hire outside firms to do the work at a cost of several hundreds of thousands of dollars, Russell said, adding that the Trinity site was entirely designed and coded by the two-person Creative Services team, only costing the school about $200.

“I’m very proud of the hard work that my colleague Phil Reese (Trinity’s director of multimedia services) and I put into this project, and I’m so glad to have a cleaner, less monochromatic website for Trinity,” he said. “It’s a great first step toward a completely reimagined Trinity website that goes beyond the ‘getting to know Trinity’ content that has been our focus so far.”

In expressing her gratitude to the design team for their long hours, hard work and “smart thinking” in the redesign, McGuire called Trinity’s “public face” fresh and contemporary.

Much of this first phase focused on updating the web pages for each individual academic program to add career paths, internships, related degrees, admissions FAQs and more, Russell said. 

“We also created the great new tool accessed from the biggest button on the home page, which allows prospective students to ‘Explore All Academic Programs,'” he said, adding “they can be quickly sorted and filtered to find the best program for you.”

Phase two will focus on revamping the areas of the website that focus on current students, such as student life, campus activities, residential life, and athletics, Russell said.

“Phase two will bring new life to these sections of the website to engage our campus community and serve them with easier access to the information they need most,” he said. 

“We plan to form a student focus group to help us determine what features, content, and design items are needed,” Russell said. “I would anticipate that members of the Student Government Association will participate, along with other students.”

Other parts of phase two will include improvements to the “My Trinity” page, which will become a true student and campus community portal with articles from the student news site “Trinity Times,” an updated presentation of upcoming events, and enhanced navigation, he said.

“I’d imagine that phase two will launch mid-way through the 2023 fall semester,” Russell said. “We wish it could be sooner, but there will not be enough students available during the summer to collect the information that we need in an interactive forum.”

The Creative Services team is urging the Trinity website users to reach out to them at digitalteam@trinitydc.edu to give them input about the site and if they are having problems with it.

Based on her initial experience with the redesigned website, Berry said she is more than pleased.”Based on what you see on the website,” she said, “you would want to come here to see more.”