Arizona State University Digital Transformation with Drupal Migration and Redesign

Arizona State University (ASU), a leader in innovation and education, has consistently aimed to provide top-notch digital experiences for students, faculty, and visitors. As one of the largest public universities in the United States, ASU hosts hundreds of websites serving diverse departments, research centers, and academic programs. Over time, their legacy web infrastructure, built on an outdated version of Drupal, began to show its limitations—both in performance and user experience.

Recognizing the need to modernize, ASU embarked on a large-scale digital transformation. The goal: migrate to the latest version of Drupal and simultaneously redesign the website ecosystem to reflect their progressive brand, improve accessibility, and enable better content governance.

ASU digital team laid out a clear roadmap and set of requirements:

1. Migrate to the Latest Stable Version of Drupal (Drupal 10): Ensuring long-term support, improved security, and modern development capabilities.
2. Redesign the Entire Digital Experience: Create a consistent, responsive, and accessible design system that reflects ASU commitment to innovation.
3. Simplify Content Management: Enable content editors with a user-friendly backend experience, allowing faster content updates without needing technical assistance.
4. Ensure Accessibility Compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA): As a public university, ASU needed to meet legal and ethical accessibility standards.
5. Centralize Governance with Flexibility: Maintain consistent branding and structure while giving individual departments enough freedom to manage their content.
6. Improve Site Performance and SEO: Reduce page load times, optimize for search engines, and enhance mobile experience.