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IGNITE Website Redesign
Group Project in User-Centered Web Design, UW HCDE

Mar. 2015 - Jun. 2015

Our Client:

  • Founder of IGNITE Worldwide, a non-profit organization that educates and empowers girls to discover STEM fields

 

Project Goals:

  • Understand client's business goals and expectations

  • Evaluate the user behaviors and usability issues of the original website

  • Deliver a high-fidelity prototype for the website redesign

My Major Contribution: 

  • User Research - Survey design and data analysis

  • Persona - Corporate Sponsor Persona Development

  • Card Sorting Data Analysis

  • Sketching, Wireframing and prototyping

  • Major contact and Lead for Project Handover

Process
  1. Information Collection

  2. User Research and Personas

  3. Card Sorting and Information Architecture

  4. Sketching and Wireframing

  5. Usability Testing and Client Feedback

  6. High-Fidelity Prototyping

  7. Project Handover to Client 

Output and deliverables

  • Personas and User Tasks

  • High-Fidelity Prototype in Wordpress

  • Final Presentation

  • Project Handover Information and Suggestions
    for Future Implementation

 

** The website is now live online: http://www.igniteworldwide.org

1. Information Collection

 

  • Information from client:

    • Project introduction

    • Client's business goals and expectations

    • Related marketing materials

    • Access to website server

2. User Research and Personas

 

  • Conducted User Research using:

    • ​Survey

    • Heatmap/Scroll map from CrazyEgg

    • Google analytics

 

  • Created Personas based on information from client and research results:

    • Carl Smith, the corporate sponsor

    • Val Taylor, the volunteer

    • Erica Jones, the educator

    • Izzy Gilmore, the high school girl

 

  • At this stage, based on our understanding of the business goals and user needs of IGNITE website, we came up with a list of design principles:

    • ​Enable Action

    • Concise

    • Responsive

    • Clear

    • Evokes Emotion

3. Card Sorting and Information Architecture

 

  • Card Sorting:

    • ​50 cards coming from Content Inventory of original website

    • Used OptimalSort for online card sorting survey

    • 15 Participants finished the survey, sorting all 50 cards into an average of 14 groups.

 

  • Data Analysis

    • Used dendrograms and similarity matrix as a reference, we narrowed down to 8 menu items, each containing 1 to 2 layers. 

    • After discussion with client and instructors, we thought that this was still too complicated for the purpose of this website.

    • We decided to group or eliminate around half of the original contents, and the final Information Architecture came down to 4 menu items with only one layer each.

Challenges:

  • The orginal website had a lot of redundant information or categories

  • Naming of the contents were confusing and included jargons.

4. Sketching and Wireframing

Click on the images to see an enlarged image.

Please find the axure wireframe at http://umumri.axshare.com/

5. Usability Testing and Client Feedback

 

  • Usability Testing with 5 users:

    • Not enough content on the wireframe so that people didn't know what to look for

    • Some naming of navigation items were confusing to users.

 

  • We also got a chance to share our process with our client:

    • She had overall really positive feedback

    • She also provided us with more information and materials we can utilize in our design.

6. High-Fidelity Prototype

 

  • We used Wordpress for our high fidelity protoype, because:

    • Our client was originally using Wordpress so her team had some level of familiarity to the backend managment system of Wordpress.

    • They can easily take on our work and contiue to finish the webiste redesign.

7. Project Handover

 

  • Final Report - click here to see our presentation

  • Click here to read our Project handover document, including related materials and suggestions 

  • Our client successfully implemented our redesign and now the website is running live online: http://www.igniteworldwide.org

Before Redesign
After our redesign

© 2015 by Fang-Ju Chou. 

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