Parents & Families
It is 11pm and a parent overseas is trying to reach Northeastern. The calls cost a fortune. The site wants a login she does not have. She has questions about housing, billing, and her son's health records, and nowhere to turn. This was the page meant to help her, and it had not been touched since 2022. She was not an edge case. She was one of many parents the old page left behind.
I led the redesign end to end, from research to launch. I ran a survey, 12 in-depth interviews, and usability tests against three peer universities, then rebuilt one overwhelming page into a navigable five-section system. It shipped on July 3, 2025, and in the six months after, traffic more than doubled.
Client
Northeastern Global News
Type
Family Resource UX
Year
2025
Role
Product Design, UX Research
Process
Parents set the brief. The business set the bar.
Before I touched a layout, I went wide. A survey, twelve recorded interviews, and usability tests against three peer university family sites. NGN needed the page to lift engagement and bring families back, so I designed for both: what parents asked for, and what the newsroom needed it to do.
The parents could not have been more different. A retired IT manager who lived on the parent Facebook group. A finance professional who dreaded paying tuition. A mother overseas who could only reach the school by phone, in another language, on her own dime.
From that range I built two personas, a domestic planner and a global parent, and one need surfaced across both: a single, clear place that speaks to them, instead of scattered systems that assume their student is in the room.
I let parents draw the map.
I did not invent the structure. Parents built it. Through card sorting, families grouped the content themselves, and their groupings became five sections. I ran the information architecture through eight rounds before it held. The old page was one endless scroll. The new one is five focused sections, each its own space, so parents go straight to what they need instead of hunting through everything.
One parent named the principle better than I could. He wanted a single, always-current source, not emails that go stale the moment something changes. That became the spine of the redesign: one page, kept evergreen, that the team updates instead of letting it rot.
It also had to feel human, not institutional. So I directed two phases of original illustration. Phase one brought in the campus dogs, Ryder and Cooper. For parents who had never set foot in Boston, they were something real to hold onto.
I gave finances its own front door.
Finances were the deepest pain in every interview. One parent described losing days to a single payment, afraid her daughter would lose her place. Another said the old flow was so convoluted she avoided it for the sake of her own peace of mind.
So I treated finances as a decision, not a page. I pulled it out of the menus and gave it its own section, one click from the top instead of buried deep. One calm illustration. One direct path to tuition, financial aid, billing, and the records access parents need. What used to take a scavenger hunt now takes a single tap.
Affinity Mapping
I started with the messy truth: dozens of raw notes from conversations about why modern connection feels fast but hollow. I wrote each frustration, hope, and hesitation onto its own card and let them cluster by meaning rather than by feature. Three themes rose to the top: people wanted to be known before being chosen, to move slowly without feeling behind, and to reflect privately without performing. Those clusters became the spine of the product reflection before matching, values before proximity, depth before volume. The affinity map didn't just organize research; it settled the core argument of the whole app: connect by who you are, not how fast you can swipe.
Card sorting
Twelve families, one structure.
I ran open card sorts with parents and the digital team, then watched where groupings agreed and where they split. Finances wanted to be separate, events on their own, one evergreen home base. Eight rounds turned scattered cards into five sections that held.
Information architecture
One scroll became five front doors.
The old page was a single scroll with finances buried in menus and dead links from 2022. The new structure gives each parent need its own space, so families go straight to what they came for instead of hunting through everything.
Visual direction
Human, not institutional.
I directed two phases of original illustration so the page felt like it belonged to families, not the newsroom. Phase two brought in the campus dogs, Ryder and Cooper, as a recurring thread, so parents adjusting to a student far from home had a familiar face on every screen.
Key design decision
I gave finances its own front door.
Finances were the deepest pain in every interview. So I pulled them out of the menus and gave them one section, one tap from the top. What used to take a scavenger hunt now takes a single tap.
Outcome
The page launched July 3, 2025. In the first three months, page views more than doubled against the three months before, from 7,491 to 17,672, a 136% jump. Visitors more than doubled too, from 4,600 to 9,700.
Recirculation rose from 36% to 51%. Before the redesign, about one in three families who landed stayed to explore. After, more than half did, finding what they came for instead of giving up. The page went from a dead end to a destination, and the finances that once took a scavenger hunt now take a single tap.
The lift held through the fall and winter, not just the summer onboarding window. Over the ten months after launch the page drew 41,539 views and held recirculation above 50%.
One parent I had interviewed came back after launch. He remembered the old version as rough. This one, he said, was far simpler. The person who told me what was broken returned to tell me it was fixed. It is live for every family at news.northeastern.edu/parents.
