Learner Experiences: Unique Online Experiences are the only Advantage
At the Gilfus Education Group, we believe that the student user experience is the only sustainable competitive advantage an academic institution or education and training organization can employ in the online world today.
Maintaining that competitive advantage means constantly monitoring, evaluating, and improving the student user experience. Successful student experiences result from creating inherently simple and logical interactive environments that exceed student user expectations and create an intimate connection with the user. The digital plumbing of today’s complex technology fades to the back allowing dynamic, simple, intuitive, intimate experiences. Such experiences are accomplished through careful strategy, research, design, and technology. That’s what we do best.
“Never before has there been such an eruption of education innovation from institutions and companies of all sizes,” said Stephen Gilfus, President and CEO of the Gilfus Education Group. “I sincerely believe that we have now entered the ‘dot edu’ era which will stimulate and transform students, instructors, institutions and the global economy to reach new horizons.”, “For the first time academic institutions are taking precise control of their web presence and student learning experience as online competitiveness increases.”
Stephen Gilfus
President and CEO
Unified and Optimized Online Student Experiences
Web users demand intuitive online experience consistent with brand expectations and offline interaction, making a complementary, user-centered web and new media strategy more important than ever. An effective strategy has no end date. Our strategies work to eradicate yesterday’s problems, while remaining flexible enough to address tomorrow’s opportunities.
the Gilfus Education Group’s proven process emphasizes regular communication with key project stakeholders and consensus-building activities that ensure progress. Our experts are adept at working with large stakeholder groups and facilitating decision making to drive change. We advise clients from an experienced perspective to minimize their risks and maximize their opportunities with programs in content consolidation, demand generation, social commerce, and much more. Our guidance can help create effective governance policies and practices that promote collaboration and organization.
Our digital strategy services include:
- Web Property Unification and Information Architecture
- User experience engagement across the student lifecycle.
- Web Consolidation strategies and roadmaps
- Social Media Integration and Management
- Mobile Integration and channel development
Persona Development
Through persona development, we identify and describe various audience groups. These personas influence the information architecture and design of a site, allowing it to be optimized for each distinct group. Personas are fictional characters that represent site users. They can take into consideration users’ goals, behaviors, attitudes, motivations, and context. Personas can reveal users that you may not see from just reviewing site analytics and other performance indicators. They also provide an opportunity for stakeholders to focus around the user needs. Along with user research, personas play a part in forming the foundation for the strategy and concept for the site. Usability testing uncovers usability issues of a site or site design by allowing us to observe representative users interacting with a site through tasks. Testing designs early and often produces the best results, allowing them to be refined to satisfy user needs. Usability testing up front can save time and money, ultimately increasing user satisfaction. A project’s goals determine the type of testing that we perform. We can test current live sites to create a baseline, discover current usability issues, and uncover audience expectations. We test at all the stages of design and on various mediums, from paper prototyping to interactive visual designs. Our usability testing services include moderated and unmoderated usability testing, in-person or remote testing, and testing at various stages of the design process.