Alumni platform

Connecting & supporting students beyond graduation

The National Theatre School’s alumni platform started as purely a database of alumni profiles. Launched in 2018, it featured graduates starting with the 1962 cohort. The database allowed visitors to find profiles by graduation year, program, and first or last name.

While the original website was informative, exploring profiles was cumbersome. The filters were limited and alumni profiles lacked consistent structure. Additionally, profiles needed to be updated by the school’s staff with limited capacity. This ensured that profile information was historically correct but didn’t offer up-to-date accomplishments.

There wasn’t anything bringing alumni back to the website. The website couldn’t be used as a self-promotion and career advancement tool. Having worked with NTS since 2020, we were thrilled to take on the challenge of making an engaging and thoughtful alumni platform.

New site

Easy-to-navigate directory connecting employers and alumni

Our first step was to reinvision this alumni platform as an interactive tool. Opening it to more user interactions meant clearly defining the content structure, management, and moderation processes.

We started by proposing a few options for user flows that would work well with the WordPress editorial functionality. Through discussions with the NTS team, we agreed on a process that’s also optimized for the NTS team’s capacity. The final workflow empowers alumni to take ownership of their profiles.

As part of our standard process, we paired this user experience work with defining the new site’s information architecture. We established structured metadata for all content types and outlined all interface screens to be designed. This allowed us to head into visual design with a strong shared strategic foundation.

We optimized the new website’s visual interface to be both informative, easy-to-use, and not overwhelming. While offering a wealth of helpful information, we also prioritized alumni privacy.

We managed the migration of all existing profile data for the launch of this new WordPress website. We also created a repeatable import process for the NTS team to use each year, rather than having to enter that year’s cohort information one profile at a time.

Finally, we created a section of career opportunities. While the public can view alumni profiles, job and residency postings can only be viewed by logged-in alumni. These hand-picked, exclusive postings turn the website into a valuable resource for alumni in search of their next career opportunity.

The final result is a robust public database of the school’s alumni, and more. It’s a tool to showcase the excellence of the school’s alumni, attracting new students and donors. It’s also a tool to be used by casting agents that allows alumni to use their profiles as living CVs. Finally, it’s a private and exclusive resource for alumni looking for their next career opportunity. All while being bilingual and requiring less staff capacity to maintain than the previous website.