The final project of Ironhack prework is to practise user-cantered design and study the usability of the website. The target is to improve the usability of a famous university in the States by discovering the pain points of the users and design a prototype to resolve them.

Yi Zhang
Yi Zhang
Aug 9, 2017 · 4 min read
  1. Introduction of Cornell University

The university that I choose is Cornell University, which was founded in 1865, in Ithaca, New York. Cornel is at the 6th place in the rank of global academy reputation, used to have 45 nobel laureates. As the federal land-grant institution in New York State, Cornell is one of the members of the Ivy League, and has a unique responsibility to make contributions in all fields of knowledge in a manner that priorities public engagement to help improve the quality of life in the world.

2. User personas

3. Initial observation

The initial observation of Cornell website from the user is quite positive — “beautiful and completed”. She thought that the website has a concise and modern design, contains all the necessary information for the students and researchers, and the information are well structured. The website is user-friendly by even providing the local weather.

For the navigation bar, the user thought it clear enough but looks like lack of a language bar and indication of the entry to the new students.

4. Usability Testing

I assigned the following tasks for the user, to let them look for

a. The school mascot

b. If the school offers foreing language instruction for Arabic

c. The nearest airport to the school

The result is: At the first place, 1/3 of the tasks were completed, she failed in 2, and 3. Then she tried once again to complete task 3, and it took her a lot of time. For her, task 1 is quite easy, she just search “Cornell mascot” and then the results directly brought her to the relevant page.

Here is my observation of the user behaviour of task 2 and 3.

User behavior of doing task 2
User behavior of doing task 3

5. Pain points and problem-solving

After observation of their behavior, I interviewed about the problem to complete the tasks:

I had the following questions for the user:

a. Why you think there is no instruction for Arabic?

b. Why you can not find the instruction?

c. Which function (bottoms, entries, information boxes) would be good to add to help you complete the tasks?

d. Where should this new elements appear?

Based on observing the the answers, I have detected the pain points as following:

There is no language option on the navigation bar, so it is not possible for an Arabic to get instructed if he/she only understands Arabic.

The path to get the direction from airport to the campus is too long and not easy to find out.

So I made the following design and prototype —

I added a language drop-down menu in the right-up corner of the navigation bar, and made a new page after clicking “visit”, the new page shows a campus map with a search box on the top line.

6. What I learnt…

During the practice, I notice that it is very important to carefully observe the user behavior when they work on the task. The flow of their action, the change of their expression, their finger movement…all can give feedbacks.

Moreover, I realize that the user may express differently emotion during talking and during “doing”. For example, at beginning when I asked my user to give her initial expression, she told me that she really likes the website, but when she was asked to complete the tasks, from her facial expression, I can see that she does not really like the information structure of the website.

I feel that the final project is a good practice for user-centered design and rapid prototype. I have enjoyed doing it and improved my skills of interviewing, observing and finding pain points.

Yi Zhang

Written by

Yi Zhang

I am an enthusiastic UX / UI Designer based in Barcelona.

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