UW GSRI Redesign

Professional Project, 2022-23 school year

My first year as a Graduate Assistant for the University of Washington Libraries Instructional Design (LibID) team, I worked on a project to transform:

A private, application-based workshop teaching new graduate students the basics of research

into...

An open online course that anyone can follow, over WordPress.

Timeline: 8 months (November 2022 - July 2023)

Collaborators: UW LibID Core Team - 1 manager, 1 librarian, 1 instructional designer, 1 fellow graduate assistant.

Audience: University of Washington graduate students, early-career researchers, and advanced undergraduates.

Responsibilities:

User Research: Semi-Structured Interviews and Data Analysis
Wireframing
Prototyping
Graphic Design & Marketing

Tools & Methods:

Technologies Used: WordPress, Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign.
Educational/Design Theories: Rapid Prototyping, Universal Design for Learning.

Background

The Graduate Student Research Institute (GSRI) is an annual workshop offered by the UW LibID team to introduce library research services and resources to new graduate students at UW.

During the 2022-23 academic year, the team took the existing GSRI workshop, which was closed off to students selected from an application pool, and developed a massive open online course (MOOC) to open the workshop up to the wider UW community.

The goal was to transfer all the content into an open format, but continue offering a personalized experience to students who were interested in a community-centered workshop by maintaining our closed Slack chat.

User Research

To better understand user needs, my teammates and I conducted semi-structured interviews of UW librarians and past workshop participants, representing different departments and disciplines.

I then analyzed them to create an affinity map on Figma, reflecting both the current GSRI experiences and its future potential for the broader UW community.

The common values and pain points indicated by all of our interviewees, were:

Holistic Learning: Content aimed at all fields of study, through examples and applications.
Sustained Learning & Retention: Students care less about the approach to teaching and more in the applicability of what they're studying.
Accessibility: Canvas is difficult to navigate and makes students nervous, as it "feels like a class."
Interaction & Communication: Personalizing the experience through feedback, synchronous communication, and web interactions.

User Persona and Journey Map

After gathering values, pain points, and affordances from our user participants, I decided to create a user persona representing GSRI's user base (namely, a newly admitted graduate student), empathizing with defined user needs to inform our eventual web design decisions.

From there, I also designed a journey map for our possible website experience, using the same persona.

Jenny, our user persona (yes, that is Margot Robbie in that one SNL sketch about the librarian, I thought it would fit)

Jenny's user journey

Wireframes

After defining user needs from our interviews, personas, and user flow, I collaborated with Perry to mock up the WordPress site using UW's Figma themes.

We went through 3 rounds of design critiques from our coworkers, leading to changes in our prototypes. Most of the team's feedback was on the homepage, and despite my consistent prototyping, I didn't feel like I was necessarily progressing.

The problem was solved by adjusting my communication methods - instead of understanding the root cause of statements like "this is awkward," I assumed I knew what the team was thinking, but I broke that cycle by asking follow-up and clarifying questions each design critique. The final site took 5 iterations total, and the LibID team is still using it!

Content Updates

Alongside website design, I also worked with all team members to transfer Canvas content to the WordPress site, and write new instructional content, based on other resources and concepts we wanted to share with the UW community.

The following pages were written by me:

Free Software
Research Impact
Copyright (alongside my fellow graduate assistant, Amber Mak)

We took what we valued and included it in our final design, since we thought it would benefit more people.

Graphic Design (from me and Amber!)

After the web prototyping was complete, I shifted gear to collaborate with Amber on new logo designs. Our goal was to brand a "new" GSRI representing the new experience. I made the landing page logo less busy, and ensured it matched the UW Libraries' style guide.

Amber also created an amazing husky logo that I also want to share, which she also used a sticker printer to distribute to all students that completed it and used our contact form! It is also the picture on this web portfolio's cover.

You can view all four below:

My critiques on the old logo.

My new logo proposal (accepted without revision!)

New logo (web/print version).

Shoutout Amber Mak for designing these!

Reflection

This was the first major instructional design project I worked on, taking my excitement from the intersections between education, technology, and media and translating it into something with a real-world impact. My main takeaway, as a result, was that it's important to open up dialogue rather than immediately make assumptions based on others' feedback, since flexibility is highly valued in design settings.

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