In addition to these content and functional requirements, they also wanted the site to excite prospective students and really get them feel the fresh, honest attitude of the University. They had an idea to get together a bunch of student bloggers to write about their real life experiences, and engage prospective students through social media.
In our tender that we submitted, we described our creative direction as "The Face of New Learning" — it is about showing the real, human side of HKUST, allowing prospective students to see the University through the eyes of current students in an honest way. It is about being friendly, open and transparent.
When we won the tender, we implemented this idea by developing a design that was simple, friendly, fresh and clean. The site was built using Drupal, so HKUST's editorial team can take full control over the contents and maintain the blogger community easily.
