Stanford University Faculty Staff Housing
Housing solutions that foster top-tier academic communities and world-changing research.
Bay Area housing costs are very high. Stanford Faculty and Staff Housing (FSH) provides favorable loans, low cost ownership options, and reduced rents that help Stanford University procure and retain outstanding talent.
Stanford FSH needed a modern digital platform to facilitate intuitive content management and streamline publication of home listings from a third-party database and give faculty and staff an easy place to find roommates or homes.
Their new website had to be intuitive for web editors and home-seekers alike, and it had to guarantee long-term stability and easy maintenance.
The new Stanford FSH website is beautiful, easy to use on any device, and a cinch to maintain. It’s built on a modern Drupal infrastructure that takes full advantage of Drupal core features like publishing workflows, content revisioning, and granular permissions for diverse user roles. The platform integrates seamlessly with a third-party home listings database and introduces an additional moderation layer that lets content editors place the final touches on individual listings before publication.
Key Challenges
- The new Stanford FSH is built on the newest Drupal software and sports the latest in performance, stability, and security.
- A revitalized design system and custom interactive tools built on audience research maximizes user engagement on all devices.
- Custom software creatively integrated with legacy systems feeds new home listing data into a flexible and collaborative authoring environment.
Key Solutions
- The new Stanford FSH is built on the newest Drupal software and sports the latest in performance, stability, and security.
- A revitalized design system and custom interactive tools built on audience research maximizes user engagement on all devices.
- Custom software creatively integrated with legacy systems feeds new home listing data into a flexible and collaborative authoring environment.
Say hello to your new home
Bay Area housing costs — among the highest in the United States — shouldn’t be a deterrent for would-be researchers and academics. Stanford FSH makes sure that it isn’t. Favorable loans for eligible Stanford Faculty and Staff, a wealth of Stanford Housing Program resources, a Roommate Finder, and beautiful, easy-to-browse listings make it easier than ever for the world’s most sought after researchers to say “hello” to their new Stanford home.
Informed by research, built for humans
Onsite collaborative exercises like focus group interviews, voice and tone workshops, card sorting, and comparative analysis activities set the stage for a truly user-centered process. The results of those exercises were considered and reviewed at every stage of the project, informing navigation, interaction, and design. The result is beautifully usable, powered by research, and built-to-order for the real humans using the website.
Easy connections with the Roommate Finder
In order to create a private, Stanford-specific place to make finding a place to live easier, we built the Roommate Finder app that allows Stanford faculty and staff to connect with potential roommates and find available rooms in the Bay Area. The app encourages anyone with a Stanford ID to build a profile which then allows them to create a roommate listing - either jointly with another person or solo - or a house listing.
We leveraged Drupal’s Profiles module to create ‘roommates’ and ‘homeowners’ profiles and customized it with specifics like location, budget, and amenities offered. In order for users to ‘favorite’ homes or roommates, we implemented Drupal’s Flag module and we used the Contact module to ensure faculty and staff could message each other via the digital platform without sharing personal contact information.
Digital publishing with Drupal
With Drupal’s core content management and publishing features as a starting point, the new Stanford FSH website makes quick work of content editing tasks. Property listings are automatically imported from a third-party Stanford database, then integrated into a feature-rich publishing workflow complete with revisions and distinct permissions sets for various editorial roles. Specific property data like bath & bedroom count, square feet, and price feed into discrete fields which play directly into one of Drupal’s strengths: searchable, sortable, filterable and well presented content lists. User, meet easy-to-use home listings.
Lights On Support
Launched in the Fall of 2020, Stanford FSH has since taken advantage of Aten’s Lights on Support for ongoing maintenance. Lights On Support means Stanford FSH is safe, secure, and up-to-date — always. Our support services are human-driven and flexible. Weekly sweeps of the Stanford FSH website are performed by an experienced developer who knows the project who applies security updates and checks in with the Stanford team about optional software upgrades.
Whether you prefer an autopilot or driver’s seat approach, Aten Lights On Support has you covered. Safety, security, and peace of mind? Yes please.