CEPT University

CEPT University is a renowned higher education institute in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, originally established in the 1960s as a school of architecture. Over the past decade, CEPT has expanded well beyond Architecture, offering programs in Design, Management, Planning, and Technology. This evolution prompted a revisit of their digital strategy and a complete overhaul of their web presence.

3 Sided Coin and Miranj worked together in close collaboration to create a new website for the university that encapsulates the present and also paves the path for the future. Drawing on our prior experience in building large-scale institutional and university websites¹, Miranj helped define the website architecture, steer the project, and undertake the website’s technical implementation. 3 Sided Coin led the art direction, visual design, and anchored the engagement. Both teams collaborated on the overall product design and website strategy.

Research, Strategy and Planning

The project commenced with a week-long workshop at the CEPT university campus, during which we gained a deep understanding of the institute’s organisational structure, pedagogical methodologies, academic activities and initiatives, campus culture, and the overall operations.

In order to do this, we worked with the CEPT website committee to:

• Establish website goals and define the target audiences.
• Capture feature requests, challenges, and numerous fleeting ideas from a wide set of stakeholders.
• Consolidate information spread across different microsites, portals, and ad hoc webpages into a coherent, unified structure.
• Envision future forms of communication and storytelling needs.
• Probe potential integrations with internal tools to streamline operational workflows.
• Distil the conversations and decisions into a detailed information architecture, templating strategy and feature requirements.

The workshop concluded with requirement prioritisation based on impact vs effort assessment and overall institutional prerogatives, and arrived at a clear execution roadmap and release phases.

Process

Subsequently, 3 Sided Coin commenced the design process, which involved a wireframe stage followed by the visual design stage. The wireframes gave shape to the website screens and helped the university formulate its content strategy. It also allowed Miranj to ensure the website’s adherence to the planned technical architecture.

While the designs were underway, we laid the ground for rapid Craft CMS development by defining foundational data models and establishing a templating framework to support diverse content types. This ensured predictability in development and smooth delivery once the designs were handed over to our team.

Outcome

The final website shipped the following salient features:

• Customised modelling that effortlessly captures the core structure of an educational institution — departments, offices, programs, projects, publications, resources and people serving different roles (such as board members, staff, tutors).
• A detailed taxonomy system that classifies (and interconnects) each content type (such as news, events, enabling easy content discovery through filters, tags and related content teaser grids.
• Highly malleable website, offering the ability to completely customise the navigation menus and reimagine page structures using a flexible block-based builder.
• Flexible forms that can be embedded site-wide, with the ability to offer downloadable resources on successful submission.
• Seamless data transmission between the university’s internal portal, external CRM software, and the website.

The new CEPT website now serves as a single digital gateway for its prospective students, faculty, collaborators, and the wider public. This project reflects Miranj’s approach to complex institutional engagements that require conceptualisation of robust systems designed to last and scale.