When Vice President for External Relations Lorraine Voles was researching colleges with her daughter last year, she noticed nearly all offered virtual tours for students who couldn’t make the trip to campus.

But GW didn’t. So she charged her team with a project that would ultimately take more than a year, creating an online interactive map of all three campuses that also highlights students’ experiences across the city.

“What was a years-long project is finally coming to fruition, but it’s so much more than I ever imagined,” Voles said.

Voles’ team launched the website Friday at the Board of Trustees meeting, showing off a guided tour of 10 campus “hot spots” and separate sites for each building, which includes 16 videos, photos, upcoming events and tweets associated with the space.

Geared toward prospective students, the online tool also lets users select a layer that can highlight spots on campus around a theme. For example, choosing sustainability points out bike racks and water bottle fillers.

The project is the latest for the department, which has overhauled GW’s website and rebranded the University’s logo and marketing over the past two years.

Leah Rosen, assistant vice president for marketing and creative services, said the project has encompassed nearly the whole team’s time every day for about a year.

“I think it’s really going to help us show life on campus and what the experience is like for students here for people who can’t travel,” Rosen said. “And it will reinforce for people who do visit. It will reinforce what they saw here.”

She added that her department still has work to do. The Virginia Science and Technology Campus is still missing from the site and they also plan to add more off-campus stops to the tour.

The majority of the work was done in-house, Rosen said. The architectural rendering of the maps and the back-end development, some of the priciest components, were outsourced. She declined to say how much the entire project cost.

The tour is designed for web browsers on computers, iPads and mobile, and is also on GW’s mobile app.