The new staff and student portals were launched on 13th Feb 2017, completing the second and final stage of the project.

Purpose-built from the ground up, the new portals streamline more functions than ever before, making things easier to save you time on everyday tasks.

The new portals are not just smarter – they are more us, reflecting Macquarie’s culture and personality.

The new portals are available at

Here are the launch articles for both the staff and student portals:

This project was one of the initiatives identified by the Executive Group, in response to the strategic vision outlined in Our University: A Framing of Futures strategic plan.

The executive sponsors for this project were Professor David Wilkinson, DVC Corporate Engagement and Advancement and Tim Beresford,  Chief Operating Officer.

The project Director was Rich Powell.

The design principles project were recommended by consultants Stamford Interactive. Research-driven user centred design, mobile first design, and universal design were heavily used in the project.

The primary objective of this project was to enhance the user experience of Macquarie University’s digital presence for our key audiences within the following identified areas:

  • Public website
  • Staff intranet
  • Student intranet
  • Web search

The project scope was extended to include new websites for the Macquarie Applied Finance Centre and the Macquarie Graduate Management School.

Content was sourced from a range of large sites and consolidated into the three key sites.

The sources of the new sites were:

  • Public website
  • Staff intranet
  • Student intranet
  • Five faculty websites
  • Research website
  • Finance website
  • Policy website

The number of pages, editors, technologies, and thus the degree of duplication of content was unknown at the start of the project. Agile methodologies were used to re-plan and scope the project as the understanding grew through investigation and audit of legacy content.

As well as simplifying the number of websites, each site had a simplified number of sections. The overall amount of content on the final sites was reduced by an order of magnitude.

The results are measured by surveying these audiences.

What now?

The websites are now in operational mode with approximately 300 subject matter experts maintaining them as well as IT, and the Digital Marketing team.