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The client
UCL EDUCATE is a pioneering accelerator programme run by University College London, bringing together edtech entrepreneurs and innovators with UCL's academics, researchers and educators. The goal: to develop world-class edtech products grounded in genuine learning science - not just technology for technology's sake.
The challenge
UCL EDUCATE came to Bravand via UCL's preferred supplier list with a clear problem: they had a holding page and not much else. The programme was doing genuinely important work, but their digital presence wasn't representing it. They needed a site that could speak to multiple audiences at once - edtech founders considering applying to the programme, funders and institutional partners evaluating the programme's credibility, and the wider academic and education community.
The brief wasn't just aesthetic. It was about building something with the depth and quality to match the programme's ambitions.
Our approach
We ran the full process - user research, information architecture, prototyping, testing, accessibility and SEO - before a line of design was committed. Understanding who was coming to the site and what they needed to feel confident was the foundation everything else was built on.
The design challenge was to create something that felt both academically credible and genuinely engaging - not the standard institutional template, not a flashy startup look, but something that sat confidently in the middle and communicated authority without stuffiness.
We designed and built the site on WordPress, handing it over to the UCL EDUCATE team to manage going forward.
The outcome
"The reason we went out to an agency rather than redeveloping this in house is because we wanted designs that we could never have come up with ourselves... we would never have come up with this. Spot on."
Ceri Sunu, EDUCATE Programme Marketing Lead
Working on something that needs to punch above its current digital weight?
We work with academic institutions and innovation programmes regularly - getting under the skin of complex audiences and building something that does them justice. Get in touch with the Bravand team:
