Pathways to Professional Formation
UX Design and Content Strategy | Desktop
rOLE
UX Designer
tIMELINE
10 WEEKS
METHODS
RESEARCH AND DESIGN
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Pathways to Professional Formation (P2PF) is a program that started in Fall 2018 in the College of Arts and Sciences at Seattle University (SU). The program provides students with resources for internships, career events, and growing their personal network that helps prepare students get a job after they graduate.
The client was redesigning their website and saw the need for a UX Designer to improve site functionality and usability issues.
Through basic heuristics, I found the following opportunities to make the site easier to use and read:
Make the writing easier to scan for the web
Look at the information architecture
Find opportunities for increased visuals throughout
pages from original site
STARTING WITH RESEARCH
Before my first meeting with the client, I did a competitive analysis of other programs similar to P2PF at other universities. I requested access to site analytics to review. These were my initial findings:
A bounce rate of 76%, with users spending less than a minute on the page.
A high number of 404 errors.
Searches for the program on Seattle University and Google produced no relevant results.
I decided to research the cause of the high error messages and the unusual search results.
INITIAL DISCOVERIES
WAYFINDING ERRORS
P2PF was not showing up in the academic section of the main SU site.
Google Search brought me to a page that didn’t automatically redirect me, with a vague heading stating the site had moved.
ON TO THE REST OF THE SITE STRUCTURE
I had a hunch the information architecture was confusing for other users, and I wanted to test this theory. After performing a content audit and card sort with ten users, I learned the information architecture needed adjustments. I used a card sort to determine the labels and provide options to break up content.
USABILITY TESTS BEFORE CHANGES
I wanted to understand how students were using the site and any pain points that arise for them. I conducted a usability test of the site before any re-design with four current students at Seattle University.
The key findings were:
Confusion over unfinished pages
Time on task for certain items like internship for credit was four minutes
Links taking users to places they were not expecting
“I AM NOT SURE WHERE THIS LINK GOES, IS THIS THE SAME OFFICE?”
From this early research and usability test findings, I had enough information to begin my recommendations and iterating on these designs.
RECOMMENDATIONS AND IDEATIONS
In working with the client's priorities and discussing issues uncovered through my research, I focused on two pages to re-design. I took the opportunity to iterate on smaller areas of the site that had negative findings in the usability tests while applying UX writing principles for easy reading.
freshening uP THE home page
Adding visuals to break up THE text
Making the text more scannable
IMPROVED NAVIGATION
RESULTS
Since implementation of these recommendations:
Time on site has increased by 25%
The bounce rate has decreased from 76% to 54%
404 error messages are no longer registering on the site analytics
Showing as 1st option in Seattle University and Google Search Results
NEXT STEPS
The client is pleased with the direction that the design has taken, but has not had the opportunity to implement all of my recommendations. I look forward to picking back up when the team is ready to move forward, and tackling the rest of the re-design.