Tools: Sitefinity CMS, Sharepoint, Teams, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel
Role: UX/UI Designer & Site Builder
Responsibilities: UI/UX Design, Front-End Design, Content Architecture, Client Collaboration, Training & Documentation
👤 About
CU Denver’s Facilities Management & Planning division supports the university’s physical infrastructure through departments like Facilities Management, Space Management, and Design & Construction. Their users range from students submitting service requests to staff seeking campus project information.
🎯 Objective
The goal of this project was to design and build a centralized, user-friendly website that clearly organized each team’s services, streamlined access to tools and support, and empowered internal editors to maintain their content long-term.
📰 This project was featured in CU Denver News:
Facilities Management and Planning Launches New Website in Support of Customer Service
📛The Problem
CU Denver Facilities Management & Planning was in the process of formally unifying multiple teams under one department. At the time, there was no dedicated website housing all their services and information—content was scattered across various outdated university pages, including some from a sister campus.
📋My Approach
To bring clarity and cohesion to a newly formed department, I led a collaborative, content-first design process focused on structure, usability, and long-term maintainability.
🤝 Cross-Team Collaboration
This project was lead by a project manager who helped coordinate the meetings with each department: Facilities Management, Space Planning, and Design & Construction teams to understand their specific services, user needs, and internal goals. Working with their teams, my boss organized the initial content outlines, which I translated into structured, user-focused page layouts.
🧭 Content Architecture & Usability
Every team had high-value but dense content this is why I focused on structuring pages to avoid scrolling fatigue. I used accordions for long lists, anchor links for in-page navigation, and side navs for easier cross-page scanning. I also added consistent quick links which are accessible from every page.
Example
The Parking page needed to serve a wide range of users from first-time visitors to daily commuters. I focused on making the content scannable and task-oriented.
- Embedded content: I integrated a campus parking map directly on the page to help users visually locate parking areas without needing to leave the page.
- Accordions: I used collapsible sections to organize the parking types to help minimize scrolling.
- Clarity-first layout: I prioritized plain language, short headings, and consistent spacing to help users quickly find what they need, even on mobile.
This approach allowed the page to support both quick lookups and deeper exploration.
🔍 Tools and Services Widget
One of the biggest challenges in organizing service content was the wide variation of services across units. To help users who weren’t sure where to start, I utilized a filterable component that organized all tools and services by category as well as with a text field.
Example
Our team collaborated with stakeholders and conducted internal user testing to define how users could:
- Filter services by area
- View associated costs (if any)
- Take quick actions like submitting a request
- Access internal pages for more details.
This would allow users to have streamlined access to support and ultimately reduced user friction.
🔁 Review & Iteration with Stakeholders
After presenting the pages to their respective teams, I gathered feedback and made refinements. The final site structure and styling were reviewed with the department head to ensure a unified experience across all sub-units.
🧠 Post-Launch Training & Documentation
Websites aren’t just digital billboards, they are marketing tools. I believe that every person who uses a website should know how to properly use that tool. For this project, I wrote a full how-to guide detailing every editable component, where it appeared, and how to manage it. Then, I hosted a Launch & Learn session with content owners, walking them through the backend and showing them how to confidently manage their sections going forward.
I believe that user experience isn’t just about the end user—it’s also about the content managers who keep the experience alive.
💬 Feedback
“This new website looks great, and will be so helpful to have an updated site in this area.”
“Easy to navigate and real language, not acronym hell. Well done!”
“Kudos to Olivia for designing the site thoughtfully to serve both the end user and the internal user; she focused on building it in a sustainable way that allows for FMP to take responsibility for maintaining the site. She also writes great hand-off documents for our stakeholders!”