Princeton University Website — Usability Case Study and Redesign

Princeton is a university based in Princeton, New Jersey, United-States.
It’s one of the most famous in the world with its 92,000 living alumni whose 16 won a Nobel Prize.

Visit its website www.princeton.edu

Case Study

To run this case study I asked to a user to test the university website and complete some tasks without leaving the website and without using the web site’s internal search feature.

1 — HOW IS THE WEBSITE LOOK AND FEEL?

At the opening, his first impression is that the website looks very complete and airy but not very engaging. Especially the first picture which is too dismal and too focused on religion.
Other bad point, the website is completely buggy on Internet Explorer.

The navigation of the site first part is intuitive, with good balance between modernity and old fashioned.
But not very uniform, there are at least 3 different layouts with their own navigation menu.

2 — USABILITY TESTING

To test Princeton website usability, I asked him to:

  1. Find the school mascot => He don’t find it.
  2. To tell me if the school offers foreign language instruction for Arabic => Yes, but he had to use a search engine in Areas Study page.
  3. But he easily find which is the nearest airport to the school =>
    Newark Liberty International Airport

3 — PAIN POINTS

It result from this test that find accurate information on this website is not really easy without using the website search engine.

PRINCETON ATHLETICS LOGO
Princeton mascot is a tiger and Athletic students are also called Tigers. We can find this information in the Athletics section of the website but it’s only mentioned in background and as a secondary information. That’s why the user didn’t find it.
Actually, there is others websites talking especially about Princeton Tigers with a specific logo and illustrations of a tiger.

LAYOUTS
Clearly, the Areas of Study page layout is not structured enough to allow user to find quickly the information he’s looking for.

4 — PROTOTYPE

So to help user to find more easily courses proposed by Princeton university, I decided to redesign Areas Study layout categorizing contents and turning it into visual content.

Areas of Study prototype

Run this case study was a very interesting experience. Watch a user testing this website allows me to go further my “designer” first impression and find out unexpected issues. Talk with the user has been a way to figure out solutions for pain-point and that sometimes small changes can solve a big issue ;)

Thank you for attention!

    Véronique Rodrigues

    Written by

    UX/UI designer // Art director

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