When I jumped on the project, a committee had been made to oversee the launch of the new website. The committee was filled with CSR members (Computer Support Representative) from each department in the college. None of them were designers and none of them thought to put the user first and design to their needs. I followed a non-linear design process in my redesign challenge.
I created a survey to try to understand the users better. I promoted it on the website, made a digital display for all the engineering buildings, made posters for all the buildings, and set up tables (which I personally manned) to hand out candy to try to get as many responses as possible. I also went around to the mail box of every faculty and staff member in the Engineering College and left them a card and candy to take the survey. We also posted the survey on our major social media platforms, and had a fantastic turnout! I then synthesized the data into a sixteen page report for the heads of the college to understand my findings, and presented it to all the head CSRs and the Communication Team. My report can be found below on the right.
From the data received by the survey, I created five Personas to represent the main stakeholders. I was able to use these to further guide me in the redesign process.
This was the navigation that was live on the website while I was working on the redesign.
What I proposed after creating my navigation report. I also began categorizing what parts of the site might go under what navigation head.
I conducted AB testing with students, to test my proposed navigation against the proposed navigation from the CSR members. I also wanted to see if all of the major concerns from the survey were resolved, and to make sure the terminology was clear. I conducted this test by emailing all the responses from the survey that indicated they wanted to help further, and offered a slice or pizza to help out with an in-person user test. I asked them to select from the navigation where they would go to find the given information. For example, "Where would you go to find information on an upcoming internship opportunity?" I would ask why they went there to understand their thought process, and repeated this 5 times with different locations in mind. Half the users that were tested got the Navigation A, and half got the Navigation B.
Navigation A
Navigation B
Because this was just a single semester internship, I wasn't able to get to fully designing each page of the site before my semester ended. I started creating concepts of what some key pages might look like, while still following the BYU web guidelines. The college also decided to switch their content management system during the semester so the capabilities of the system came into question. I would have loved to work with the new system to see everything available, but I was only able to make concepts to help them with the transfer.
The CSR members wanted an option of the Homepage that was full width.
The CSR members wanted an option of the Homepage that had padding on the sides of the content.
What a news story might look like while still following the BYU guidelines.