Research is Everything
During spring semester 2022 I had the opportunity to take a design class where as part of a group we would conceptualize, research, and redesign a multi page site for UVU. As part of just one group in the class, every group completed their own redesign for the site. The site we were tasked with was the First Year Advising site for UVU. The main purpose of the site is for beginning college students to meet with their advisor, view testing resources, and it also includes some resources for parents. I was in a group with four others and we all shared the same responsibilities.
First, we met with the people over the First Year advising center and heard what they had to say and what they wanted out of the site. The main points they brought forward were that 1. The site needed to look inviting, 2. Scheduling an advisor was the main purpose of the site, and 3. We needed to address the “Trail Guide” they had set up for students that couldn’t meet with an advisor.
Then we started the research phase. The first thing we did was send a couple online surveys to be answered by other UVU students. After we got the survey results mainly about demographics and who our audience is, we began to conduct some user testing of the existing First Year Advising site. The main method we used was Eye Tracking, where we asked students to sit at a desk that had cameras mounted to track where they were looking on the screen along with their emotional response based on facial expressions.
After gathering results from these tests, we began to build ome wireframes for the pages on the site. Because it was a UVU site we had to adhere to the UVU style guide including proper use of logos, color, and fonts. Throughout the process my group all shared roles equally in every step of the way. Here are some examples of the wireframes we came up with initially:
After wire framing, we iterated on them a few times then began work on the surface comps. Throughout the design we wanted to make sure that our designs focused on the main purpose of the site, which was getting students to meet with their advisor. We ended up scrapping the Trail Guide as a group because we felt it wasn’t necessary when there are already phone and zoom options for meeting with an advisor. Here are some examples of surface comps:
The final step in the process for us was creating a working prototype of the site to show off functionality and site structure to the client. We used InVision app for this, an online app lets you take surface comps and connect them together to make a working navigation. Because we took a mobile first approach to the design, we focused on making a mobile prototype that encompassed the whole site. The prototype was a great way to get a feel for the site on mobile without implementing it all the way to a live server and we could show it off to the client before the project was technically live.
Conclusion
Overall this class was a great way to learn the whole process behind designing a website. Most of the process was conducting research to figure out who are audience was first, then learning what their needs were and how they navigated a website naturally. I thought this was super interesting because just like other scientific fields we had to conduct research to base our work off of facts and statistics, not just opinion and artistic style. I will definitely be using these skills in my career as a web developer/designer.
Sterling Holt is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Web & App Development. The following article relates to (Final Project) in the (DGM 2240 Course) and representative of the skills learned.
