Making the Grade

Garland Independent School District

No Limits on Learning

Educating 52,000 students at 71 campuses, Garland ranks as the second-largest district in Dallas County and one of the largest in America. With a rich, 100-year tradition of excellence, Garland boasts a diverse population that speaks more than 100 languages. The district is known for its technology-driven campuses, magnet programs, and for offering approximately 200 career-specific and technical education courses.

Garland came to Taoti with a website that was in dire need of an upgrade. Their outdated site crashed during high traffic periods and made it painful for administrators to send out urgent school alerts. Plus, their needs had changed and the volume of content had grown tremendously, making it hard for users to find what they needed, or to use the site on mobile devices. So how did we design an award-winning site that captures their vast size and opportunities, helps visitors find what they need, and simultaneously can design a personalized education plan for each child based on specific strengths, talents, and interests?

Preparing for the Future

We saw this redesign as an opportunity to streamline how audiences engage with the site, to enhance homepage features, and to integrate new content and functionalities. It was equally important to empower Garland’s staff to be able to easily maintain and update the site, which was crucial to their ongoing ability to maintain a dynamic, engaging community. Based on extensive audience research, competitive analyses, and a comprehensive user experience and design process, Taoti determined that users required rapid access to health alerts, school opening and closing updates, report cards, and transportation information, with fast loading speeds on both mobile and desktop devices.

New features of the site include a scannable and dynamic home page, which—served as an interactive tour of the school district–with maps, key stats, resources, accessible search, essential messaging, and links to key programs, news, and alerts. The site is multilingual, supporting languages including Amharic, Arabic, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Taoti also designed a multi-faceted school directory to help visitors find schools either by alphabetical order, city, or even by grade level. Additionally, a mega menu was built to minimize the number of necessary clicks for users, and to provide context for primary categories of information. These significant enhancements transformed their site into an interactive portal, enabling the community to connect and stay informed about the latest updates from the school district.

Maximizing the Potential

Parents, students, and staff now have convenient access to vital information, ranging from educational resources and school directories to event updates and career opportunities. The integration of technology has not only enhanced the user experience but also strengthened the district’s commitment to personalized education plans, helping each student maximize their potential. Plus, the ease of content management has enabled Garland’s staff to keep the site fresh and relevant, reflecting the dynamic nature of the district and fostering a more connected community.

Garland has reported increased site traffic, higher user satisfaction rates, and positive feedback from all stakeholder groups.
Including:

Pageviews per session dropped by a third, indicating that users are finding what they need more efficiently.
Mobile users now comprise 61% of the total, an increase of about a third. This rise in mobile browsing shows that users need to access the site on their mobile devices to find time-sensitive information like school opening and closing alerts.
On their old site, users couldn’t find what they needed, so they used the search function for basics like jobs, ready hub, and calendar. Now, these terms don’t even rank in the top 5, as users are effectively utilizing navigation tools to find what they need.

This successful digital transformation is setting a new benchmark for other school districts.

2024 MUSE Creative Design Gold Winner:

Garland Independent School District 7