Lock Haven University

UX Design | Accessibility

Lock Haven University (LHU), now part of Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, is a small university campus with a big selection of academic programs, offering the best of both worlds. LHU students benefit from small class sizes, personal attention, and a strong sense of community, along with the freedom to study the subjects they’re passionate about.

Northwoods Higher Ed Team Provides Digital Design Rescue

Lock Haven University first came to Northwoods with somewhat of a digital emergency. Their previous design partner was unable to meet the necessary deadlines, which meant LHU needed a website redesign completed quickly and on a tight budget. When other agencies walked away from the challenge, the Northwoods higher education team stepped up to deliver exceptional results ahead of deadline.

The Situation

The Lock Haven website had evolved over several years into a collage of buttons, imagery, and links in need of a design refresh.

LHU’s admissions team was seeking personalized website content to help increase enrollment and improve user engagement.

Personnel changes and an aggressive project timeline required a partner that could act quickly, stay organized, and collaborate effectively with Lock Haven staff to meet objectives.

The Solution

Northwoods designers used existing style guidelines as a foundation to develop a comprehensive mood board, highlighting LHU as a friendly, affordable university offering a quality education.

New homepage and program page templates utilized on-brand design, clear navigation, and strong UI layouts, tailored for specific use cases and personas.

Prototypes included ADA-compliant color contrast with interactive hover and focus states that meet WCAG standards for web accessibility.

Custom imagery and callouts for alumni, military, graduate, international, and academic/career pathway pages were designed to help users feel more engaged based on their needs, interests, and background.

The Northwoods team provided expert guidance and managed the project with ease, quickly meeting expectations and achieving project goals.

hand-drawn bird, chirping

"Northwoods understood we wanted to deliver interactive content that would be meaningful to our prospective students - and they delivered. Their higher education design team worked with us step-by-step to strengthen our online presence and we look forward to hearing how our students, friends and community receive such a high level of personalization.”

- Bryson Purcell, Assistant Director of Admissions, Lock Haven University

The Design

Navigation improvements for Lock Haven focused on increasing conversions while continuing to serve the website’s existing user base. Northwoods designers employed parallax effect and scroll, hover, and loading animations to create a sense of depth and movement.

A desired “homey, comfortable, friendly” tone is carried out through large-scale imagery, blocks of color with icons, image carousels, and video. Design templates incorporate Lock Haven’s existing branding, colors, and fonts into more modern layouts and were developed with distinct personas and program pathways in mind.