Research University — District Leadership Research Lab
A specialized research lab within a major university needed a digital presence that accurately reflected its work and made it easier for district leaders, researchers, and institutional partners to understand what the lab did and engage with it.
Highdive started with stakeholder interviews and an audit of existing research and materials, mapping what was known about the lab’s audiences and where the gaps were. Personas and experience journey maps followed, showing what each audience was thinking, feeling, and doing at every stage of interaction with the lab — from initial awareness through ongoing engagement. The journey maps informed the website architecture directly and gave the lab’s leadership a shared view of how their audiences actually experienced them.
The website redesign followed the research. Information architecture, content hierarchy, and calls to action were grounded in what the journey maps surfaced about what different audiences needed and when. The build was customized to align with university brand standards while giving the lab its own distinct identity. A full brand collateral refresh — logo update, case study design, and PowerPoint template redesign — ensured everything the lab put in front of funders, partners, and prospective research participants reflected the same positioning as the new site.
Two years later the lab returned with a bigger ask: build a full courses platform. Highdive designed and developed a complete e-learning environment integrated directly into the existing WordPress site — selecting and configuring a learning management system, building user account management with location detection and payment processing capability, migrating course content across six units from a legacy platform, and designing the entire learning experience to match the lab’s brand. The result was a self-contained, commercially-ready training platform the lab owned and could manage independently, without a separate system or vendor dependency.