The University Hospital Foundation funds life-changing advances in care, from community prevention programs to leading-edge hospital technology, turning donor generosity into better health outcomes for Albertans at every stage of life.

Overview

At Strut Creative, I led the University Hospital Foundation's digital transformation by guiding the product vision from discovery to high-fidelity design. Collaborating with cross-functional teams, we applied a user-centered approach to replace their fragmented legacy site with a modern, scalable platform.

The challenge

Complex Information Architecture (IA)

Over the years, ad-hoc updates created a deep, multi-layered site structure that buried core user flows and high-value resources. This disorganization hid critical elements like donation pathways, resulting in high user friction and poor discoverability.

Scaling and maintenance debt

The legacy platform lacked a unified design system or standardized UI components. This absence of a modular framework caused severe inefficiencies during development handoff and made ongoing content management a heavy lift for the client.

The solution

Strategic discovery & roadmapping

We conducted collaborative stakeholder workshops early in the lifecycle to establish core product objectives, define user personas, and reach consensus on content priority before touching layout designs.

UX wireframing & journey mapping

Restructured the site map from the ground up, translating complex institutional requirements into intuitive, low-friction user journeys and wireframes that prioritized ease of use.

Scalable CMS architecture

Architected a custom, modular UI framework that replaced rigid templates with flexible, reusable components. This solution ensured visual consistency while empowering the client to easily build dynamic layouts and manage future platform updates.

The outcome

By anchoring the project in strong early-stage strategy and design leadership, our team at Strut Creative successfully balanced complex business requirements with a clean, human-centered user interface. We delivered a robust, scalable digital product that streamlined the user journey, reduced friction in the development cycle, and positioned the University Hospital Foundation for long-term growth and ongoing impact.

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"Vee consistently pushed the team to think beyond the immediate design problem. She challenged how content was organized, questioned whether information belonged where it was being placed, and identified gaps between the content strategy and the experience we were trying to create. Rather than treating that as someone else's responsibility, she worked with our developers to think beyond individual components and helped our account team identify issues early. That led to better client conversations before development progressed, strengthened the final product, reduced unnecessary rework, and gave both our team and the client greater confidence in the solution."

Kevin Bassett
Creative Director, Strut Creative