Website Redesign for Physics, OAU

Rebuilding OAU Physics as a living academic website

The Department of Physics at Obafemi Awolowo University needed more than a visual refresh. It’s existing website was outdated, unreliable on mobile, difficult for the department to maintain without involving a developer.

Working through One Smart Space, Ayomide and I designed and built a modern academic Platform connecting programmes, courses, staff, research groups, publications, news and events through a custom content-management system.

The department had outgrown its previous website

The old website no longer represented the department well. Its content was outdated, parts of the site broke on mobile, and publishing even a small update required developer access. Managing and transferring credentials also made routine maintenance unnecessarily difficult.

The project began when the head of department requested a more modern public-facing presence. Ayomide brough his perspective as both a lecturer in the department and co-founder of One Smart Space, while I contributed my expereince across design and engineering.

We designed for both visitors and the people managing the website

The public website needed to serve prospective students, current students, staff, researchers, and external collaborators. Visitors had to find academic programmes, research areas, people, publications, news and events without understadnign the department’s internal structure.

Behind the public experience, staff needed a way to publish and maintain that information themselves. This made the administration system part of the product, not a separate technical feature added afterwards.

The major challenge was organising interconnected academic information

Before designing a any screen, we worked through how programmes, course, staff, research groups,and publications related to one another. The same information often needed to appear in several places, so treating each page as an isolated docment would have created duplication and inconsistencies.

We structure the website around reusable information. Research group pages connect their focus areas, members and their outputs. Programme pages combine overviews, admission requirements, course and career possibilites. Staff and research outputs are similarly connected rather than maintained as unrelated pages.

Two decisions made the system easier to maintain

Course are used by several people and appear in different parts of the platform. Instead of duplicating course information across programme pages and lecturer profile, we created a central course record that could be referenced wherever it was needed. Editing was limited to academic coordinators and the head of department.

We also simplifies research publishing. Staff can enter a publication’s DOI , retrieve its metadata through Crossref, review the information, and publish it without manually completing every bibliographic field.

The design continued evolving in code

We created a small number of top-level screens in Figma to define the visual direction, hierarchy, and overall character of the website. The department already had an established identity, so the goal was not to create a whole new brand, but to translate it into a clearer, more contemporary digital experience.

From there, we moved to implementation and continued refining the design using real content and working functionality. I worked across Next.js frontend and backend, including the custom admin system, authentication, database-connected content workflows, media storage and Crossref integration.

Stack: Next.js TypeScript, TailwindCSS, Prisma, PostgreSQL, Supabase and ChatGPT Codex.

Building a solution that could continue without us

The completed platform gives the department a responsive public presence and a system for managing its own academic content. Programmes and research are easier to explore, while authorized staff can publish news, events, courses, and research outputs through dedicated workflows.

What I am most proud of is that the plaform has continued beyond One Smart Space’s active collaboration with the department. The project also changed how I understand design engineering: the work did not move neatly from completed design into implementation. Design decisions continued evolving as real content, technical constraints and scope changes became visible.

Design engineering des not stop when the design is approved. The product continues revealing what the design needs to become.