Background
ABELAO, the Belgian Academy for the Study of Ancient and Oriental Languages, organises intensive summer courses every year in Louvain-la-Neuve, on the UCLouvain campus. Its members are PhD students and academic staff, and are able to devote only a limited amount of time to preparing for a session. Their old website, built on Joomla, was becoming outdated due to a lack of maintenance and did not automate any tasks. The new website, live since January 2026, has replaced it; the 2026 session is the first to take place on the new site.
Challenges
Streamlining session preparation. Enrolments, deposits and final payments, accommodation bookings (online or on-site), opening and closing enrolments on a course-by-course basis: the team must manage everything on their own, without a developer.
Giving each course its own distinct identity. Around thirty courses, each with its own language and style, need to be made clear and recognisable at a glance.
Calling things by their proper names. Between the school’s vocabulary and that of the online shop, the natural language of payment (shopping basket, order) was adopted, following several discussions with the team.
Approach
I began by conducting interviews with former students and team members to define the foundations of the user experience before proposing the interface. Each stage concluded with a validation meeting with the association. I was responsible for the art direction: for each course, an old typeface representative of its language was chosen in consultation with members of the association, then redrawn digitally using Affinity (design software) to give the whole project a consistent style.
Deliverables
User experience and branding
- User interviews and definition of UX fundamentals
- Art direction: series of ancient characters, one per course description
- Mock-ups and interface (Figma)
Website and tools
- Bespoke WordPress theme: homepage, course descriptions, tutor profiles, team, practical information, contact; five-colour palette
- Enrolment plugin, which adapts an online shop tool (WooCommerce) for the summer school: course levels and languages, teachers linked to their courses, accommodation, deposit and balance, course statuses
- Tools for the team: ‘Courses’ tab in the admin panel, user guide, settings
Project timeline
- December 2025: interviews, UX/UI design and art direction
- January 2026: launch of the new website
- 2026: implementation and subsequent enhancement of the registration plugin
- 2026 session: first session managed using the new website
- Next session: 3–13 August 2027, registration in January 2027
