WEBSITE REDESIGN
A ReDesign of the UC San Diego Study Abroad Website
SUMMARY
A majority of students want to study abroad at some point in their college career. Our group of three were tasked with the goal of redesigning the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) study abroad website. Over the course of two weeks, we conducted interviews, created user persona and use cases, and designed part of the new website using Balsamiq. Our group tackled four main design challenges of the current Study Abroad website. Based on the user scenarios from our personas, we created a final product that intuitively flows for all three types of users
SCOPE
Role: UX Designer, UX Researcher
Date: November 2016
Skills: UX Design, Interviewing, Competitive Analaysis, Prototyping, Web Design
Tools: Balsamiq, Google Docs, Google Sheets
Deliverable: Interactive wireframe of a section of a redesigned website
PROCESS
USER INTERVIEWS
User Demographics
To understand how to re-design UCSD Study Abroad website, we needed to understand it's users. Our group collectively interviewed 12 users ranging from prospective students thinking about studying abroad to students who have come back from studying abroad to parents who want to learn more information about their child applying to a program. Interviews were recorded and lasted 15 - 30 minutes on average. During the interview, the subject would walk us through using the website. We focused on what the users liked and disliked about their experience on the website and what they would want different.
PERSONAS
From the interviews, our group made three overarching personas that would guide us in how we should redesign the current website.
Prospective Student Persona
- 20-year-old, male living in San Diego
- Concerned with fulfilling his graduation requirements while abroad
- Lower to middle class and is worried about the financial burden of going abroad
- Wants to learn about the country's culture, meet new people and gain new experience abroad
- Worried about cultural and language barriers
- Goals with the website are to learn about the program's classes, how to specifically afford the program, and how other students have afforded the programs before
Returnee User Persona
- 21-year-old female from California who went abroad for 2 months
- Studied abroad in European and Asian countries
- Wasn't concerned with classes, but with having an enjoyable experience
- Has gone back to the website since coming back from abroad, but didn't find it helpful
- Feels some of the programs could be more visual, empathetic and detailed
- Worried about the financial burden
- Felt more comfortable looking at programs she would feel safe in
- Goal with the website is to learn how she can help the study abroad office after coming back
Parent User Persona
- 60-year-old woman from California
- Excited about her child going abroad, but is hesitant about her child's safety, how useful the program is, where her child is living and how will they transport themselves, how much money it will cost them, and who they will be traveling with
- Middle class and doesn't know how to pay for the program quite yet
- Never used the website and doesn't know how to approach it
- Goals with the website are to learn where her child will live and what kind of environment they will be surrounded in, the finances of the program, how structured the program will be, and how well the program can contribute to the child's education
USE CASE TABLE
In order to understand the specific reasons each persona would use the website, our team created a use case table with 100 uses cases varying between the three personas and their specific scenarios. These use cases are important as designers because it allows us to view specific reasons our users would go to a website as well as how important those reasons are relative to that user and other users. For example, our "Prospective Student" persona wants to learn about the cultural barriers and he wants to know if he will have a roommate. This is more important than other reasons he might come to this task. In additional, his parent would want to know if he has a roommate as well.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
university website comparison
Now that we have our user personas and their use cases, we need to learn how other similar universities are designing their study abroad website. We wanted to compare against three other UC Universities because UCSD belongs in the same system of schools as them. We wanted to compare against San Diego State University (SDSU) because those students live in San Diego and share similar experience with UCSD students. Finally, we wanted to compare against an entirely different website from the UC System, and we thought Princeton had a good organization flow.
REDESIGN
Our group agreed that a search bar was necessary, but couldn't figure out how to fit in into the streamline banner we were imagining. The problem with search is we have to decide if the search bar is for this specific site or also for UCSD's entire site (like how it is designed now). Our final design has a search that encompasses it all but primarily focused on just the study abroad website. The deciding factor was that we wanted the banner labels, which are most important features of the website, next to the search bar at all times.
Since there were so many different types of visitors for the site like alumni, parents, faculty, returnees and prospective students, we were having a hard time deciding to fit everyone into one category or if each group should have their own home page label. We thought it would be too cluttered to have so many homepage labels so we ended up putting every group under the label ‘You’. The problem with just “you” is that is creates confusion on what that tab does. In other words, “you” is not that intuitive. We went back to the competitive analysis we did, and tried to find a different way of grouping the users. We decided on grouping it based on students & parents and then faculty & alumni. Faculty and alumni have very different needs than students and parents, so they have their own separate banner label; however, from our interviews and personas, there is a lot of overlap between prospective student users and parent users. Both users are concerned with activities, academics and safety, so they could be grouped together. Although returnees have different reasons to use the site, they could still be useful to students and parents because some information prospective students would want to know will be under the returnee section.
We couldn't decide what type of user to gear the homepage towards, but the deciding factor was that one of the users we interviewed didn't know the difference between the three major types of programs UCSD offers. Because of this, we wanted to make this very clear on the homepage so that no matter who you are, you will know basic information before pursuing more into the site. We also wanted to feature particular programs that would rotate weekly like in the UC Davis website. We thought the way UCSD's study abroad website displays their calendar was poor design, so we based our calendar and reminders, like deadlines, off of UC Berkeley's website. Figuring out what goes on the homepage was a tough decision, but we wanted to design a homepage that is usable for all users, kept up with current reminders and events, and uses visuals to entice people to go abroad.
One thing we noticed that we had to make a strong decision on was how every website labels their navigation bar differently. A good example is how different websites label their financial information. Some websites put finances under a banner label, while others put it inside banner labels. We decided to make a "Finances" label, but had a very difficult time deciding which sub-labels went under Finances because some websites have scholarships, additional funding, fees, and billing information. As you will see in our design, we wanted to incorporate a more simplistic approach that isn't redundant. To void having "scholarships" under sub-label "finance options" and having a sub-label "scholarships", we had it all under finance options. Our three sub-labels under the banner finance label were "finance option", "billing", and "program fees".
IMPACT
Our group's proposed redesign of the UC San Diego Study Abroad website better facilitates prospective students, program returnees, and parents learning vital information regarding studying abroad through UCSD's programs. With a new home page that creates a central hub of information for all types of users and a more categorical way of organizing financial information, all three user personas will be able to learn basic information about UCSD's study abroad programs as well as how to individually finance the program. These changes create a fluid UI of the website while keeping important information as key points for every user.