University of San Francisco Website

a redesign

Objective: 

The main goal of this project was to redesign the internal and external facing website of the University so as increase the interaction with ease of use by prospective students, current students, faculty and staff.

Contribution:

Role: UX Designer, Visual Designer - Team Project

Duration: 1 year 6 months

Toolkit: Whiteboard, Photoshop, Paper prototype

Skills: Surveys, user interviews, affinity diagram, personas, scenarios, storyboards, sketching, paper prototyping, usability testing, interactive digital prototyping

Overview:

This project was a part of my work at University of San Francisco. As a team project, this design challenge not only helped develop UX processes but also team roles and management skills. Effective teamwork was paramount to the process and by establishing clear communication methods and goals our team was able to work efficiently and productively. I contributed my organizational skills and prior management techniques as well as my visual design skills to the scope of this project. 

Process: 

Upon meeting with the Deans and the President of the University, it became clear that they needed their site to achieve three main goals; establish credibility for potential students, clearly highlight their dedication to the current students and to create a stronger branding across the entire website. My main goal with the UI was to reinforce their brand identity and core values: a sustainable approach, longterm relationships, generational ownership and efficiency through technology. 

Insight: 

One of the key user groups we wanted to interview was the University's existing students. Because of the sensitive nature and the competition from other school.  In order to mitigate the problem of the website not compatible with different devices, so that he potential students can explore the website and the courses in a systematic way, I led an interview process with the current students and the department heads and helped explain to them the resaon and value of only UX research and the user interviews. As a result, we were able to gather the data and we were able to start the redesign process.