Ground-up redesign of a top UK university website and intranet.
Highlights
With over 100 stakeholder groups and the fortune of the university resting on the outcome, this was a huge responsibility.
This was a very satisfying project - nothing was off the table and I had free reign to talk to all stakeholders as much as I could.
Challenge
The University of East Anglia (UEA) approached us to completely redo their digital presence: website, portal, micro- sites. This was a greenfield project with a substantial budget.
The existing external website was structured from an organisational view, meaning that visitors had to be familiar with the Byzantine hierarchies of a large university before being able to navigate the site.
The internal-facing portal was not clearly separated from the external site, meaning that some parts of it were accessible by the public, and some weren't.
Action
A research phase had uncovered a great deal of information, including over a hundred user groups. I worked with our team to create a project plan, breaking down the users groups into functional sub-projects.
I ran a design sprint, which highlighted some value-added features. It also allowed the team to get to know each other and rbuild connections.
For each sub-project I engaged with key stakeholders and users, leading workshops, ascertaining needs and requirements, which I passed on to the project analysts.
I drew a series of 42 “sentiment sketches”, which helped staff consider the experience of interacting with the university from an outsider perspective. This helped move people away from the entrenched organisational structure.
During the course of the project I worked in earnest on the information architecture of the new website and portal. Numerous experiments were conducted, including tree tests, first-click tests, user interviews and field studies, with both the existing website and early prototypes.
We also ran a large-scale on-site survey across the campus which yielded a phenomenal amount of information, and increased the visibility of the project.
I used the data from stakeholder interviews, surveys and user tests to craft a cohesive narrative around the proposed solution, which I called the “solution vision”.
The solution vision required me to develop my own functional prototype in order to explain it effectively. I brought this prototype to the client, who agreed to adopt my solution.
The work then began to convey the work of the team to the wider stakeholder base, which I did through a series of presentations, to both small and large audiences.
This achieved our objective of getting buy-in from the rest of the organisation.
Highlights
The solution vision was a real eureka moment, with all the information coming together to form a cohesive path to success.
On the down side, the multi- agency approach required careful managing of expectations. With a low level of UX maturity in the organisation there was also constant demand for justifying my desired approach.
As development started it was clear the progress was slow and features did have to be dropped in order to meet stringent deadlines.
Output
- Desk research
- Design sprints
- Sentiment sketches
- Stakeholder workshops
- User interviews
- Tree testing & first-click testing
- Field study
- Qualitative survey
- Solution vision
- Prototype
- User testing
- Stakeholder presentations
- Agile user stories
- Development support
- Design briefs for third-party agency
Outcome
This was a strategic project, as it set the course for multi-channel marketing propositions. The solution delivered on all fronts, setting a roadmap for the university’s market engagement for years to come.
Bounce rate has decreased, as has pages per visit, pointing to increased engagement on this key property of the university.
