There are so many ways that a person can go about designing and creating a website. Much like there are countless ways to create a brand. However, a problem arises because not all websites and not all brands have success, and this is where the need for UX design comes in. UX design makes all the difference when it comes to creating a website that has success and brings in traffic. The design is based around the user and what they need to navigate through the page and find what they are looking for easily. Through this article I will go through my process of designing a website for the Utah State Poetry Society (UTSPS) beginning with research, organizing the content, creating sketches and finally the finished appearance.
UTSPS came to our group and asked us to assist them with the renewal of their current website design. They had some specific goals for us to accomplish such as creating a design that would be responsive, easy to navigate, and a design that would assist them in growing their traffic from younger generations.
Research
We began looking at their current website, and our group quickly became overwhelmed with the lack of organization and excess of information. On top of that, the site they had was filled with content and links that were no longer viable. We quickly realized that the goals they had set for us were going to be a lot more difficult to accomplish than we had initially assumed. We also decided to look for other poetry sites and see if there was an overall pattern for their content and their look that would be easily recognizable and usable to users who are prone to visit sites involving poetry.
Our first goal for the site was to make it responsive on mobile devices. We knew that it needed to be more simple by adding more white space, organizing the content better, and setting up a system for good information architecture. We needed to be consistent across the board with all pages, so when the current users came to the website, they would recognize the site. We would do this by structuring, Branding, and using a good style guide. Since our current users were mostly older, we needed to make the site easy to use, and for the user to be able to learn how to use the site, so when they came back it was easy to navigate.
In an attempt to get the general consensus from the current members of UTSPS as well as from people who were not members of UTSPS, our team decided to send out two different surveys. The first survey we sent had questions that were directed towards the members, and asked them questions regarding the design and usability of their current site. The second survey included questions that were more generally about poetry and what would interest them in joining a poetry group. We knew that getting the input from people outside of our group would not only help us get specific insights of changes needed for the current site, but also implement new insights of things to incorporate to draw more traffic to their poetry site.
Not even a week passed and we had received over 100 responses to our surveys. The general consensus from the current members of what they wanted to improve was the overall aesthetic. They wanted a website that was “more modern,” “easy to use,” and “less clutter.” The responses that we got from those who weren’t members of UTSPS were that of creating a group where there would be events that they could gather together for, and a site where they could easily see when those events were happening.
Planning and Discovery
The next step our group took to focus on the users we were designing the website for was creating personas. Our first persona we created was a woman named Barbara. Our creation of Barbara was centered around the current members of UTSPS and allowed us to come up with the needs and difficulties that she might encounter while navigating a site. This helped us remain focused on the simplicity and importance of usability of the overall site.
Design
After determining the important features we needed to include and emphasize, we decided to create a sitemap to organize our content so that we could begin designing. The current members had voiced that they wanted a site with “less clutter,” and a site that was, “more modern.” So our group came up with a simple design that was clean, simple and easy to navigate. Now that the sitemap was complete and the content was organized, we began to sketch out ideas for the layout of the content. Wireframes were created and our sketches began to come to life. It was very exciting to see how all of the content was coming together. With these simple wireframes that followed the sitemap we had previously created, we unanimously agreed on a design that was modern, simple, clean and would allow any user to easily use it. With the wireframes sketched out and reviewed, we began create surface comps from them. We found that the addition of photos and colors really helped us refine the site so that every addition we made had a purpose and helped the user to navigate the page.
Testing and Validating
Photos, colors and content were all set into place, and our team began to work on the prototype. We began with the mobile prototype, then moved to the tablet, and then desktop. The prototype seemed to be a success. We tested our new design by reaching out to our target audience and asking them to complete simple tasks such as finding out how to donate money on the site. The responses we got from their interaction with our design was a general success. We did find that there were a couple features that we needed to change or implement, and we also received comments stating that this design was “easy to navigate,” and they liked the simplicity of it. With our testing complete, we felt successful.
Each portion of the design process that our team took allowed us to create a better design for our client. Looking back there are no steps that I can honestly say we could have done without. Though it was long and thorough, I am a firm believer that it allowed us to focus on the most important aspects of the design that the users wanted and would be looking for. I learned that paying attention to the details in each step will be such a benefit in the end. I also learned that each client is different and has a different vision for their site, so no matter what happens, you need to account for their vision and try to incorporate it into the design.
