Ironwood Technology Charter School

The Challenge

Ironwood is a tuition-free public charter school in Austin, Texas, that runs an unusual dual-track program: computer science, robotics, and cybersecurity taught by working industry professionals on one side, and skilled-trades pathways, electrical, HVAC, welding, and automotive among them, on the other. Their old site buried that combination under generic school-website language, so a prospective family skimming it for ten seconds had no way to tell Ironwood apart from any other charter school in the district. The staff also could not point recruiters or partner employers to a single clear page explaining the work-based learning program, which meant internship and apprenticeship conversations kept starting from a blank email instead of a page that had already done the explaining.

The Solution

I started with a flat site map built around the two things Ironwood actually wanted a stranger to understand in the first ten seconds: the industry-professional instructors, and the work-based learning pipeline into internships, apprenticeships, and co-ops. That meant an Academics page organized around two clearly labeled tracks, STEM and Skilled Trades, rather than one long undifferentiated list of classes, plus a dedicated section describing dual-enrollment credit through Austin Community College and a bridge pathway to the University of Texas at Austin. I kept the navigation to the same seven-item pattern I use across every project, since a school site has exactly the same problem a business site does: too many nav items and nobody finds anything.

Accessibility mattered more here than on most projects, since the audience genuinely includes middle- and high-school readers along with parents on a range of devices. I held every color pair to a 4.5:1 contrast minimum, wrote real alt text instead of filler on every photo, and made sure the whole site was fully usable from a keyboard, not just a mouse.

The Result

The relaunched site gives Ironwood one clear page to send both a prospective family and a corporate partner to, instead of trying to explain the school's dual-track model over email every time. The school's own materials point to relationships with Austin employers such as Samsung, Roku, Apple, and CACI International, along with college partners including UMGC, Purdue Global, and MIT's open courseware, as proof of where the work-based learning pipeline actually leads. Those names are Ironwood's own claims about their partners, not endorsements from Strikeworks Studio, and Ironwood itself is a fictional client built for this coursework project.

View the live Ironwood site