The Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) is a graduate unit within the University of Toronto and a leading contributor to research and training in the health system industry.
This project focused on redesigning the IHPME website that lives alongside with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health brand while bringing life to health policy.
As an intern supporting the lead UX/UI designer, I was responsible for creating a new navigation interface that was both visually cohesive and intuitive to use. My work built upon the existing brand guidelines and UI components developed earlier in the project. I explored multiple design solutions and delivered refined options for review and decision by the project lead.
The original navigation lacked visual hierarchy and alignment with the newly updated brand identity, showing inconsistency across the site.
With so many pages to manage on a university website, the original navigation felt overwhelming, especially under the Education tab, where cluttered links made scanning difficult.
Several categories were unnecessary, poorly labeled, or contain too many levels of hierarchy, forcing users to make unnecessary clicks to access information.
Before jumping into the visual redesign, our team took a step back to rethink the overall menu structure. While I wasn't directly involved in updating the navigation flow, I studied the changes closely to understand the rationale behind them.
The original Current Students menu contained a dense list of sub tabs like Academic Appeals, Student Directory, and Resource Hub. These items felt more like a list of student services which didn’t really need their own dedicated pages.
To streamline navigation flow, we moved everything into the main Current Students page and organized the content into cards with short descriptions. This made the information easier to scan, while still giving students a clear idea of the support available.
We also moved Incoming Students out from under Current Students and placed it alongside other top-level items. Since it’s meant for prospective students, not current ones, separating it made more sense and improved visibility for anyone exploring application requirements.
Similarly, we removed the entire Admission menu and replaced it with an Apply Now button, which now appears across multiple locations within the site for quick access, including directly within the Study at IHPME menu. All admission-related content that was previously spread across sub-tabs is now consolidated into the Apply Now and Future Students pages. This change reinforces the call to action and makes it easier for prospective students to apply without having to dig through multiple layers of navigation.
While some content was removed to simplify the structure, we also added a few new sections that gave students more intuitive entry points based on the information they are looking for. Finance Your Degree grouped together everything from tuition to financial aid and scholarships, making it easier for students to find all the information they need to fund their education. The Courses submenu provides essential academic details, such as timetables and course descriptions, that help students plan their studies. And the new Quick Links tab offers quick access to frequently used UofT tools and resources.
