ICCIT Program Website Redesign
The ICCIT Website Redesign project report aimed to evaluate usability issues of the current University of Toronto’s ICCIT program website, provide design recommendations, and proposed a new potential website design which would aim to increase the usability and traffic. The full report was submitted to the ICCIT council for further review.
Overview
UX Case Study for University Course: UX Design – Qualitative Methods
Objective
Evaluate usability and identify user pains in current website design. Cultivate good usability design principles and requirements in our design. Offer alternative design by exploring and incorporating different UX methodologies.
Techniques Used
Contextual Inquiry (CI), Participatory Design (PD), Coding, Thematic Analysis, Work Models, Focus Group Usability Evaluations
Tools Used
Balsamiq, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Mural, Stormboard
Responsibilities
Project Management, Constructing CI/PD Protocol, Facilitating CI & PD Sessions, Creating Flow models, Ideating Prototypes, Analyzing & Coding Transcripts, Deriving Design Requirements, Conducting Usability Evaluations
Duration
13 Weeks
The Problem
The current ICCIT program website is not constructed in a way that is accessible and easy for users to navigate. The current site provides static and boring design which does not reflect the artistic nature of the program or its students.
Problem Statement
How can we redesign the UofT's ICCIT Program website to reflect the artistic and user-centric nature of the major?
Our Aim
Empathize
Contextual Inquiry
Contextual Inquiry methods were used to capture ongoing experiences of the users in the environment that they use the website (tasks they do on the website in the most natural environment they use this website in).
Users were identified as advanced users of the site (ICCIT upper – 3rd-5th year students ) and novice users of the site (high school students – gr 11-12 interested in applying for ICCIT program).
*Contextual Inquiry: method of having users familiar with the ICCIT website lead us through tasks as we assume the role of ‘apprentice/novice users’ and the users are seen as ‘master/experienced users’ in using the website.
Work Models
Both user groups CI sessions were coded and 5 work models (flow model, culture model, sequence model, artifact model, and physical model) were created for analysis on user breakdowns and disruptions in user flow.
Using each user’s work models, we combined them into aggregate models to understand repeated user breakdowns (as seen in red).
Define
CI & Work Models Thematic Analysis
We conducted a thematic analysis on coded CI transcripts and work models and our team narrowed down the usability fails to be the following and organized them into an affinity diagram format.
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Ideate
Design Recommendations
Using the different thematic analysis categories, we attributed a corresponding design requirement for content, information architecture and design to remedy each usability fail category in our proposed design.
Design
Participatory Design (PD)
Participatory design aims to take a collaborative approach to design in which actual users of the ICCIT website provided insight and designed the ICCIT website how they would have like to see it.
Our team conducted 6 Participatory Design Sessions in which users were given few different design prompts out of the 10 to design for.
These prompts were decided on directly from the findings of the CI thematic analysis and design requirements.
For example: How would you make course information accessed within 3 clicks or less? Where would you place the full program description?
Evaluate
PD Session Thematic Analysis
We created another affinity diagram to analyze coded PD Sessions and organize them into different themes. This was done to help categorize common design decisions that participants deemed important.
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Iterate
Early Wireframes
Applying what we learned through the user created PD wireframes and PD thematic analysis, the team constructed specific page wireframes to include design and content decisions deemed important by our users and PD participants.
