Case Study

 

Building the Global Campus

New York University

New York University (NYU) and SDG partnered to create an award-winning, online campus to support their students, staff and faculty.

Challenges

Students, faculty, staff
International user base
Legacy systems
Academic scheduling

SDG Solutions

Product Strategy
Enterprise Architecture
User Experience
Technology Delivery
CMS implementation
Machine Learning
AWS Cloud Adoption

Global Reach

Entering a phase of growth beyond New York City to three primary campuses and dozens of satellite locations, NYU desired a digital portal focused on supporting students, faculty, and staff. This digital campus would integrate with services to intelligently present a custom-tailored experience to each user based on that user’s roles, needs, activity, location, and preferences.

Additionally, NYU envisioned a system that would: 

  • Feature a modern, responsive design.
  • Integrate numerous student, staff, and faculty services.
  • Foster connections between people across the university.
  • Remain highly available and performant for a global audience.
  • Be flexible to maximize the speed-to-market for future development.

 

It begins with planning

Based on our extensive portal experience as well as our commitment to academia, NYU engaged SDG to refine and implement NYU’s vision. This included:

 

  • Providing guidance through planning phase.
  • Gathering requirements.
  • Partnering with NYU to refine the user experience vision.
  • Recommending technology and enterprise architecture.

Guiding the process

SDG developed a robust algorithm to determine the relative “hotness” of content and functionality for each user based upon that individual’s history of interactions. In addition, SDG: 

  • Oversaw system development and configuration.
  • Coordinated deployments.
  • Implemented mature product management and software development practices.

SDG consultants played a variety of roles

 

  • Agile project delivery and management
  • Business analysis
  • Enterprise architecture and application development
  • Fully responsive user experience development
  • Consultation on long-term product management and operational strategies
  • Documentation and training

Exceeding Expections

The new NYU portal, branded Global Home, received a great reception at launch, exceeding expectations from the original vision.

Going forward, NYU Global Home is positioned to support the current needs of the university, and allows the flexibility to create and differentiate experiences to meet the changing needs of faculty, staff and applicants, as well as individual schools and programs.

To read more success stories, visit the our work page.

Images courtesy of Unsplash and NYU.