The faculty of Design and Arts of the IUAV University in Venice started across 2007 and 2008 a rejuvenation process the involved classes, laboratories, teachers and students in order to bring its work to a wider and more international audience. Part of this process was dedicated to the redesign of the faculty website. The main goal of the redesign was to make the website simplier to navigate and richer of energetic contents.

Rather than a simple redesign of the website graphics and layout we considered this work as the possibility to better define IUAV’s web strategy and rethink the whole information architecture. During the initial research we ended with a number of new principles:

• The university website shouldn’t be the transcription of all the printed and bureaucratic materials.
• Students and teachers are more important to the University than classes’ titles, CFU credits and ID numbers.
• Venice is a strategic and unique location for a design school.
• The website should be dynamic and give a sense of live action.

We simplified the information architecture creating two main menus. The central area is dedicated to a new live diary the daily timetable with live pictures from the laboratories, latest projects and ongoing events. This new feature works as a visual blog of the classes and a fast and easy to use agenda.
We developed a new social platform, Showcase, where both students and teachers can sign in and create their profiles. Students can upload their projects and teachers can rate them and choose their faves. The most successful projects are automatically included in the official IUAV website, keeping the university portfolio up to date and challenging for the new students.