Higher Ed Digital Strategy
A site redesign
transformed into an institutional strategy
The University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) engaged Breyta for a website redesign. As Project Manager and UX Strategy Lead, I connected institutional priorities and existing content into a digital strategy, then led the team through information architecture, experience design, and design handoff to the client in 2018.
Experience Strategy
Information Architecture
Strategic Alignment
Client
UC ANR
Role
Project Manager UX Strategy Lead
Scale
500K Monthly Visitors 4-Month Engagement
Core Team
2 Designers • Technical Lead • Agency President
Related Websites
Destinations Audited
Refined Categories
Final Focus Areas
The Challenge
An ad hoc web presence for a complex institution
UC ANR’s website had grown around organizational needs. Existing research documented usability and content problems, but the central site’s purpose and priority audiences were still undefined.
Navigation mixed subjects, organizational units and tasks, with overlapping routes to the same information.
Expertise and resources were scattered across independently maintained pages and sites.
The parent site lacked clear ownership and a consistent way to connect and reuse existing content.
I led project delivery and UX strategy through design handoff: deepening the research, connecting institutional priorities to digital goals, and creating the information architecture and content model that shaped the new experience.
Six focus-area signpost pages gave visitors a way into UC ANR’s expertise by interest, with routes to the programs, research and resources behind it.
Research & Strategy
Define what the website needed to do
In conversations with the client's communications team, I encountered vague answers to core questions: who does the website serve, what should it communicate about UC ANR, and how should it connect to UC ANR's statewide programs and digital properties? I secured approval for targeted discovery before committing to a direction.
Connect the redesign to institutional priorities
I independently reviewed UC and UC ANR’s strategic plans and found a high-priority mandate to “Tell UC ANR’s Story.” The greater visibility supported partnerships, funding, government relationships, and program reach. That gave the website a purpose: communicate the institution’s collective expertise and impact, then help people connect with it.
An updated website needed to enhance visibility and increase awareness of UC ANR's value and expertise.
Understand the content across the ecosystem
I expanded the audit to ~70 core destinations on the main site: programs, services, research centers, and communications properties. A sample of subsites showed what they actually published. Analytics and internal feedback added context. I also audited how peer universities with comparable divisions organize their information, to see which patterns applied to UC ANR and where we could improve on them.
A sample of the ~70 related sites that fall into natural groupings like youth, environment, gardening, agriculture, and research. Each published their own content and kept their own identity.
Give the team a basis for decisions
Presenting the findings to the Strategic Communications Director and team, I led working sessions to refine the website goals, key audiences, content priorities, and metrics. For example, instead of the default "All of California", audiences were now tied to the website goals with key groups including policy makers, media, partners, donors, and growers / producers. The framework guided what the site presented and how its value could be evaluated by connecting institutional aims to actions such as finding expertise, contacting partners, accessing publications, and giving.
Information Architecture & Content Model
Create a model to connect subjects, content, and sources
Organizing the mixed inventory was only part of the work. I needed to create a framework that connected related expertise across sites. My working model tracked three questions: 1. What are the destinations and content types? 2. Which topics connect them to inform an emerging taxonomy? 3. What belongs on a top-level page, and what are its peers?
From draft classifications to a shared taxonomy
Most relationships naturally emerged in the content groupings, while others required further iteration with the client. Categories such as Economic Development and Innovation became clearer when the content inventory was considered alongside UC ANR’s strategic plans. I developed the taxonomy and refined it with the client into 11 shared topics. These combined into six broader focus areas, giving visitors understandable entry points into expertise that crossed program boundaries, without requiring them to know UC ANR's organizational structure.
Eleven topic tags, grouped into six focus areas, drive the pages, menus, and content.
Make the structure work across the ecosystem
I structured and validated a five-level information architecture around the shared taxonomy, simplifying top-level navigation while preserving routes into deeper programs, expertise and resources. I tested the model against UC ANR’s 600+ related sites to ensure it could accommodate the broader ecosystem while allowing independent sites to retain their identities. Within the new templates, shared tags surfaced the 26 core programs, research centers and related content by topic, with links to their sites. A new feature flag allowed the client to decide which news, events, and publications from across the ecosystem would display on the main site.
The new site structure used focus-area entry points and pathways into UC ANR’s deeper programs and resources.
The five-level menu structure is validated in the mobile view.
Experience Design
Each element of the experience has intent
The experience translated UC ANR’s strategic plan and agreed-upon website goals into clear priorities: establish the institution’s identity, demonstrate its impact, extend the reach of its expertise, and invite engagement. I sketched the initial concepts using the existing content and set the hierarchy, then worked with the lead UX designer through low-fidelity iterations and refinements. The designer produced the formal wireframes and final designs. I led presentations, feedback, and decisions with the 12-person Communications team through approval.
Homepage
An institutional home that tells the story
I shaped the homepage to introduce UC ANR as a whole, then gave visitors ways to explore its work and get involved:
Establish who UC ANR is: Lead with healthy food systems, healthy environments, healthy communities and healthy Californians, supported by articles and video telling the broader story.
Show why the work matters: Give impact evidence from institutional reporting a prominent place.
Open pathways into expertise: Use six focus areas to connect related knowledge and resources across programs.
Make engagement easy: Provide direct routes to Ask an Expert, publications, locations, volunteering and giving.
Focus Area
Connect related expertise in one view
The focus-area template brought those priorities into a subject-specific experience. Shared tags by topic connected programs and research centers along with client-selected news, events, and publications, with links to the sources.
Show impact: Introduce the focus area and highlight the work's contribution to California.
Connect expertise: Bring program and research links together.
Extend reach: Feature the latest related news and events.
Invite participation: Offer ways to visit, volunteer, give, ask an expert or attend an event, with related publications and a route to the full collection.
Navigation
Simplify routing by interest
While the Focus Areas menu offered six subject-based entry points, the About menu retained direct access to programs, research centers, and publication topics for visitors who knew what they wanted. Together, they supported exploration and direct lookup. The mobile navigation solved for the deeper routes through the five-level hierarchy.
Impact & Proof
A strategy put into practice
beyond the website
The outcome gave UC ANR a shared structure for positioning its leadership and expertise, surfacing existing content, and reusing it across the site with a single entry.
Approval
Final design supported by 30+ academic and program leaders in a review led by the agency president, where I answered detailed questions about the research and taxonomy rationale.
Handoff
Strategy, sitemap, taxonomy, page and navigation designs, and style guide delivered to UC ANR's technology team in 2018. UC ANR implemented and launched the site in early 2019.
Influence
The Communications team used the website strategy to revise their annual plan.
It was a pleasure working with the Breyta team on our website refresh project. Not only did they have cutting-edge creative talent and expertise that we were able to draw upon, but their overall project-management skills were much appreciated.
Strategic Communications Director
UC ANR
Thanks to YOU! The design and the architecture look great... we are getting rave reviews.
Marketing Director
UC ANR
Previous Project
© 2026 Deb Mindel. All rights reserved.
Higher Ed Digital Strategy
A site redesign
transformed into an institutional strategy
The University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) engaged Breyta for a website redesign. As Project Manager and UX Strategy Lead, I connected institutional priorities and existing content into a digital strategy, then led the team through information architecture, experience design, and design handoff to the client in 2018.
Experience Strategy
Information Architecture
Strategic Alignment
Client
UC ANR
Role
Project Manager UX Strategy Lead
Scale
500K Monthly Visitors 4-Month Engagement
Core Team
2 Designers • Technical Lead • Agency President
Related Websites
Destinations Audited
Refined Categories
Final Focus Areas
The Challenge
An ad hoc web presence for a complex institution
UC ANR’s website had grown around organizational needs. Existing research documented usability and content problems, but the central site’s purpose and priority audiences were still undefined.
Navigation mixed subjects, organizational units and tasks, with overlapping routes to the same information.
Expertise and resources were scattered across independently maintained pages and sites.
The parent site lacked clear ownership and a consistent way to connect and reuse existing content.
I led project delivery and UX strategy through design handoff: deepening the research, connecting institutional priorities to digital goals, and creating the information architecture and content model that shaped the new experience.
Six focus-area signpost pages gave visitors a way into UC ANR’s expertise by interest, with routes to the programs, research and resources behind it.
Research & Strategy
Define what the website needed to do
In conversations with the client's communications team, I encountered vague answers to core questions: who does the website serve, what should it communicate about UC ANR, and how should it connect to UC ANR's statewide programs and digital properties? I secured approval for targeted discovery before committing to a direction.
Connect the redesign to institutional priorities
I independently reviewed UC and UC ANR’s strategic plans and found a high-priority mandate to “Tell UC ANR’s Story.” The greater visibility supported partnerships, funding, government relationships, and program reach. That gave the website a purpose: communicate the institution’s collective expertise and impact, then help people connect with it.
An updated website needed to enhance visibility and increase awareness of UC ANR's value and expertise.
Understand the content across the ecosystem
I expanded the audit to ~70 core destinations on the main site: programs, services, research centers, and communications properties. A sample of subsites showed what they actually published. Analytics and internal feedback added context. I also audited how peer universities with comparable divisions organize their information, to see which patterns applied to UC ANR and where we could improve on them.
A sample of the ~70 related sites that fall into natural groupings like youth, environment, gardening, agriculture, and research. Each published their own content and kept their own identity.
Give the team a basis for decisions
Presenting the findings to the Strategic Communications Director and team, I led working sessions to refine the website goals, key audiences, content priorities, and metrics. For example, instead of the default "All of California", audiences were now tied to the website goals with key groups including policy makers, media, partners, donors, and growers / producers. The framework guided what the site presented and how its value could be evaluated by connecting institutional aims to actions such as finding expertise, contacting partners, accessing publications, and giving.
Information Architecture & Content Model
Create a model to connect subjects, content, and sources
Organizing the mixed inventory was only part of the work. I needed to create a framework that connected related expertise across sites. My working model tracked three questions: 1. What are the destinations and content types? 2. Which topics connect them to inform an emerging taxonomy? 3. What belongs on a top-level page, and what are its peers?
From draft classifications to a shared taxonomy
Most relationships naturally emerged in the content groupings, while others required further iteration with the client. Categories such as Economic Development and Innovation became clearer when the content inventory was considered alongside UC ANR’s strategic plans. I developed the taxonomy and refined it with the client into 11 shared topics. These combined into six broader focus areas, giving visitors understandable entry points into expertise that crossed program boundaries, without requiring them to know UC ANR's organizational structure.
Eleven topic tags, grouped into six focus areas, drive the pages, menus, and content.
Make the structure work across the ecosystem
I structured and validated a five-level information architecture around the shared taxonomy, simplifying top-level navigation while preserving routes into deeper programs, expertise and resources. I tested the model against UC ANR’s 600+ related sites to ensure it could accommodate the broader ecosystem while allowing independent sites to retain their identities. Within the new templates, shared tags surfaced the 26 core programs, research centers and related content by topic, with links to their sites. A new feature flag allowed the client to decide which news, events, and publications from across the ecosystem would display on the main site.
The new site structure used focus-area entry points and pathways into UC ANR’s deeper programs and resources.
The five-level menu structure is validated in the mobile view.
Experience Design
Each element of the experience has intent
The experience translated UC ANR’s strategic plan and agreed-upon website goals into clear priorities: establish the institution’s identity, demonstrate its impact, extend the reach of its expertise, and invite engagement. I sketched the initial concepts using the existing content and set the hierarchy, then worked with the lead UX designer through low-fidelity iterations and refinements. The designer produced the formal wireframes and final designs. I led presentations, feedback, and decisions with the 12-person Communications team through approval.
Homepage
An institutional home that tells the story
I shaped the homepage to introduce UC ANR as a whole, then gave visitors ways to explore its work and get involved:
Establish who UC ANR is: Lead with healthy food systems, healthy environments, healthy communities and healthy Californians, supported by articles and video telling the broader story.
Show why the work matters: Give impact evidence from institutional reporting a prominent place.
Open pathways into expertise: Use six focus areas to connect related knowledge and resources across programs.
Make engagement easy: Provide direct routes to Ask an Expert, publications, locations, volunteering and giving.
Focus Area
Connect related expertise in one view
The focus-area template brought those priorities into a subject-specific experience. Shared tags by topic connected programs and research centers along with client-selected news, events, and publications, with links to the sources.
Show impact: Introduce the focus area and highlight the work's contribution to California.
Connect expertise: Bring program and research links together.
Extend reach: Feature the latest related news and events.
Invite participation: Offer ways to visit, volunteer, give, ask an expert or attend an event, with related publications and a route to the full collection.
Navigation
Simplify routing by interest
While the Focus Areas menu offered six subject-based entry points, the About menu retained direct access to programs, research centers, and publication topics for visitors who knew what they wanted. Together, they supported exploration and direct lookup. The mobile navigation solved for the deeper routes through the five-level hierarchy.
Impact & Proof
A strategy put into practice
beyond the website
The outcome gave UC ANR a shared structure for positioning its leadership and expertise, surfacing existing content, and reusing it across the site with a single entry.
Approval
Final design supported by 30+ academic and program leaders in a review led by the agency president, where I answered detailed questions about the research and taxonomy rationale.
Handoff
Strategy, sitemap, taxonomy, page and navigation designs, and style guide delivered to UC ANR's technology team in 2018. UC ANR implemented and launched the site in early 2019.
Influence
The Communications team used the website strategy to revise their annual plan.
It was a pleasure working with the Breyta team on our website refresh project. Not only did they have cutting-edge creative talent and expertise that we were able to draw upon, but their overall project-management skills were much appreciated.
Strategic Communications Director
UC ANR
Thanks to YOU! The design and the architecture look great... we are getting rave reviews.
Marketing Director
UC ANR
Previous Project
© 2026 Deb Mindel. All rights reserved.
Higher Ed Digital Strategy
A site redesign
transformed into an institutional strategy
The University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) engaged Breyta for a website redesign. As Project Manager and UX Strategy Lead, I connected institutional priorities and existing content into a digital strategy, then led the team through information architecture, experience design, and design handoff to the client in 2018.
Experience Strategy
Information Architecture
Strategic Alignment
Client
UC ANR
Role
Project Manager UX Strategy Lead
Scale
500K Monthly Visitors 4-Month Engagement
Core Team
2 Designers • Technical Lead • Agency President
Related Websites
Destinations Audited
Refined Categories
Final Focus Areas
The Challenge
An ad hoc web presence for a complex institution
UC ANR’s website had grown around organizational needs. Existing research documented usability and content problems, but the central site’s purpose and priority audiences were still undefined.
Navigation mixed subjects, organizational units and tasks, with overlapping routes to the same information.
Expertise and resources were scattered across independently maintained pages and sites.
The parent site lacked clear ownership and a consistent way to connect and reuse existing content.
I led project delivery and UX strategy through design handoff: deepening the research, connecting institutional priorities to digital goals, and creating the information architecture and content model that shaped the new experience.
Six focus-area signpost pages gave visitors a way into UC ANR’s expertise by interest, with routes to the programs, research and resources behind it.
Research & Strategy
Define what the website needed to do
In conversations with the client's communications team, I encountered vague answers to core questions: who does the website serve, what should it communicate about UC ANR, and how should it connect to UC ANR's statewide programs and digital properties? I secured approval for targeted discovery before committing to a direction.
Connect the redesign to institutional priorities
I independently reviewed UC and UC ANR’s strategic plans and found a high-priority mandate to “Tell UC ANR’s Story.” The greater visibility supported partnerships, funding, government relationships, and program reach. That gave the website a purpose: communicate the institution’s collective expertise and impact, then help people connect with it.
An updated website needed to enhance visibility and increase awareness of UC ANR's value and expertise.
Understand the content across the ecosystem
I expanded the audit to ~70 core destinations on the main site: programs, services, research centers, and communications properties. A sample of subsites showed what they actually published. Analytics and internal feedback added context. I also audited how peer universities with comparable divisions organize their information, to see which patterns applied to UC ANR and where we could improve on them.
A sample of the ~70 related sites that fall into natural groupings like youth, environment, gardening, agriculture, and research. Each published their own content and kept their own identity.
Give the team a basis for decisions
Presenting the findings to the Strategic Communications Director and team, I led working sessions to refine the website goals, key audiences, content priorities, and metrics. For example, instead of the default "All of California", audiences were now tied to the website goals with key groups including policy makers, media, partners, donors, and growers / producers. The framework guided what the site presented and how its value could be evaluated by connecting institutional aims to actions such as finding expertise, contacting partners, accessing publications, and giving.
Information Architecture & Content Model
Create a model to connect subjects, content, and sources
Organizing the mixed inventory was only part of the work. I needed to create a framework that connected related expertise across sites. My working model tracked three questions: 1. What are the destinations and content types? 2. Which topics connect them to inform an emerging taxonomy? 3. What belongs on a top-level page, and what are its peers?
From draft classifications to a shared taxonomy
Most relationships naturally emerged in the content groupings, while others required further iteration with the client. Categories such as Economic Development and Innovation became clearer when the content inventory was considered alongside UC ANR’s strategic plans. I developed the taxonomy and refined it with the client into 11 shared topics. These combined into six broader focus areas, giving visitors understandable entry points into expertise that crossed program boundaries, without requiring them to know UC ANR's organizational structure.
Eleven topic tags, grouped into six focus areas, drive the pages, menus, and content.
Make the structure work across the ecosystem
I structured and validated a five-level information architecture around the shared taxonomy, simplifying top-level navigation while preserving routes into deeper programs, expertise and resources. I tested the model against UC ANR’s 600+ related sites to ensure it could accommodate the broader ecosystem while allowing independent sites to retain their identities. Within the new templates, shared tags surfaced the 26 core programs, research centers and related content by topic, with links to their sites. A new feature flag allowed the client to decide which news, events, and publications from across the ecosystem would display on the main site.
The new site structure used focus-area entry points and pathways into UC ANR’s deeper programs and resources.
The five-level menu structure is validated in the mobile view.
Experience Design
Each element of the experience has intent
The experience translated UC ANR’s strategic plan and agreed-upon website goals into clear priorities: establish the institution’s identity, demonstrate its impact, extend the reach of its expertise, and invite engagement. I sketched the initial concepts using the existing content and set the hierarchy, then worked with the lead UX designer through low-fidelity iterations and refinements. The designer produced the formal wireframes and final designs. I led presentations, feedback, and decisions with the 12-person Communications team through approval.
Homepage
An institutional home that tells the story
I shaped the homepage to introduce UC ANR as a whole, then gave visitors ways to explore its work and get involved:
Establish who UC ANR is: Lead with healthy food systems, healthy environments, healthy communities and healthy Californians, supported by articles and video telling the broader story.
Show why the work matters: Give impact evidence from institutional reporting a prominent place.
Open pathways into expertise: Use six focus areas to connect related knowledge and resources across programs.
Make engagement easy: Provide direct routes to Ask an Expert, publications, locations, volunteering and giving.
Focus Area
Connect related expertise in one view
The focus-area template brought those priorities into a subject-specific experience. Shared tags by topic connected programs and research centers along with client-selected news, events, and publications, with links to the sources.
Show impact: Introduce the focus area and highlight the work's contribution to California.
Connect expertise: Bring program and research links together.
Extend reach: Feature the latest related news and events.
Invite participation: Offer ways to visit, volunteer, give, ask an expert or attend an event, with related publications and a route to the full collection.
Navigation
Simplify routing by interest
While the Focus Areas menu offered six subject-based entry points, the About menu retained direct access to programs, research centers, and publication topics for visitors who knew what they wanted. Together, they supported exploration and direct lookup. The mobile navigation solved for the deeper routes through the five-level hierarchy.
Impact & Proof
A strategy put into practice
beyond the website
The outcome gave UC ANR a shared structure for positioning its leadership and expertise, surfacing existing content, and reusing it across the site with a single entry.
Approval
Final design supported by 30+ academic and program leaders in a review led by the agency president, where I answered detailed questions about the research and taxonomy rationale.
Handoff
Strategy, sitemap, taxonomy, page and navigation designs, and style guide delivered to UC ANR's technology team in 2018. UC ANR implemented and launched the site in early 2019.
Influence
The Communications team used the website strategy to revise their annual plan.
It was a pleasure working with the Breyta team on our website refresh project. Not only did they have cutting-edge creative talent and expertise that we were able to draw upon, but their overall project-management skills were much appreciated.
Strategic Communications Director
UC ANR
Thanks to YOU! The design and the architecture look great... we are getting rave reviews.
Marketing Director
UC ANR
Previous Project
© 2026 Deb Mindel. All rights reserved.