RIT IST Department Website Redesign

2019 · Rochester Institute of Technology — IST Department (academic project)

Restructuring and redesigning the RIT Information Science & Technology department website for faster information discovery.

Redesigned the RIT Information Science & Technology department website to help students, faculty, parents, and prospective students find relevant information quickly. Involved user testing on the existing site, full IA restructuring, and a validated hi-fi prototype.

The problem

When a visitor lands on RIT's IST department website (student, staff, parent or prospective student), are they able to find relevant information on the website in their limited time?

Objectives

Restructure the information and content on the department website to allow users to find information faster.
Redesign the interface so that it is user-friendly and shows information relevant to the user's choice.

Research & analysis

No standard patterns for displaying or laying out information across university department websites. Most look outdated and obsolete — leaving an open opportunity to design user-centric IA from scratch.

Primary personaInternational undergraduate student — Least familiar with the structure of US university websites — ideal baseline for testing whether the redesigned IA is self-explanatory to a cold user.

Process & prototyping

Research: Competitor analysis of multiple university department websites. Found no prevailing standard, most sites outdated.
Initial testing: Usability testing with 10 participants in the campus usability lab (tasks: find a relevant course, professor, and research area). Heuristic evaluation of the existing site.
Define: User Journey Map (all visitor actions and pain points), primary persona (international undergrad student).
Ideate: New sitemap, content model, hand sketches, wireflow.
Prototype: Interactive hi-fi Adobe XD prototype.
Final test: Treejack tree-testing (full results on Optimal Workshop), followed by usability testing with the prototype.

View the interactive prototype

Testing & iteration

View the tree-test results

Outcome & impact

Validated IA and hi-fi prototype with improved task-completion rates on Treejack and post-test SUS improvement.

Role & collaboration

Team

3 UX/UI designers.

My role

Competitor analysis of university department websites.
Usability testing (10 participants in the RIT usability lab) and heuristic evaluation of the existing site.
User journey map and primary persona definition.
Sitemap, content model, sketching, and wireflow.
Hi-fi prototype in Adobe XD.
Treejack tree-testing and final usability testing.

Tools

Adobe XDAdobe IllustratorOptimal Workshop (Treejack)

Read the full case study