Case Study: Project MUSE (Johns Hopkins University) achieves a user-friendly responsive redesign and dramatic global usage growth with Mindgrub

Project MUSE - Customer Case Study

Project MUSE, the Johns Hopkins University–affiliated digital provider of scholarly humanities and social science content, needed an organizational refresh to improve usability, accessibility, and responsiveness for multiple audiences including publishers, librarians, and individual researchers. Project MUSE engaged Mindgrub to reimagine the user experience, information architecture, and design so the site could better support marketing, sales, and customer journeys while remaining consistent with their content brand.

Mindgrub led a full discovery—analytics, content audit, tree testing, and a survey of ~300 publishers and librarians—then delivered audience pathways, personalized contact forms, modern responsive design templates, and UX/development annotations for implementation. Since launch Project MUSE has seen strong, measurable gains and positive feedback: July journal usage +7.3%, China +56.1%, Canada +7.4%, Brazil +1300%, and book usage up 389% in Australia and 34.8% in Canada, demonstrating Mindgrub’s impact on access and engagement.

Project MUSE

Abe Novick

Marketing Manager