User Interface
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Prototype
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User Research
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Usability Testing
This is a redesign of the Automation and Electrical Engineering website for Utah Valley University's website. The Automation and Electrical Technology program need to reach out to more potential students. Most people do not know about the program and if they do learn about the major it is through word of mouth. The Automation and Electrical Technology program need a better web page to get more attention online. The overall goal is to get more people informed about the program through the UVU website. There needs to be more students signing up for the program every year.
I conducted research on current Utah Valley University students and people that were considering attending the school to get a better understanding of what aspects of the job market are most important to them. The goal was to know what things should be highlighted when redesigning the site and what might interest people in applying for the program as well as asking about their current knowledge of the engineering program and seeing if they might be interested in enrolling in the program. I also redesigned the new layout of the website to make it easier for users to find some of the more importent pages.
The UX design process starts by gaining an understanding of the product, the users, and the stakeholder's goals. Research is then conducted by way of surveys being sent to different target groups and then analyzing the data collected from the surveys. Then the design process begins with High-Fidelity wireframes and detailed mockups of the final design. Prototyping and User Testing are then conducted on the new site. After the findings of the testing are used in making the site, even more, user friendly.
The main concern of the department was to get more people aware of the program, primarily the AAS degree because there were so few people applying to that program each year. The goal is to get more students to enter the program. Research needed to be conducted to see what people know about the program and who might be interested in it. I needed to understand what was most important to people regarding the job market so we would know how to promote the program on the website. I ended up surveying students on what type of jobs they may be interested in and how important things like salary and job security were to them. In conclusion, I found that security was a lot more important to them than their income was. These are things that I could use to promote the program on the website since the degree has a 100% job placement.
After getting more information about the target demographic I was able to create user personas based on my findings.
After the research on the users is done I started to take a look at the current webpage and began the first stages of the redesign. The sitemap helped view the content, flow of the pages, and the information that is laid out on each page.
After the site mapping is finished I start to layout the information on the pages creating wireframes to give us the beginning stages of what the finished site will look like.
The large majority of the people coming to the site will most likely be looking at it on their phones. I wanted to make sure the website will work for mobile devices as well.
The color and images are incorporated after the final wireframes are created. The finished mockups will be what the new rendition of the site will look like. I wanted to ultimately make the information on the site easier for people to understand, and make the most important features that people would need for applying to the program more prominent which will entice more people to enter the program.
The final stage of the redesigned website was to create and test the prototype of the new layout. I tested 3 different areas of the site to make sure future students would be able to find them. The 5 test users were high school to college age. They were asked to complete a handful of tasks on the website which included finding the advising and scholarships pages. They also were asked to find more information about the major itself. Our testing concluded I still had some redesigning and adjustments to make with some of the pages. Users were having a hard time finding the advising page. They were trying to find the advisers through the faculty and staff page. I fixed this problem by adding a link to the advising page on the faculty and staff page.
Throughout this project, I worked closely with a stakeholder to get to know her goals for the website and the most important objectives to accomplish with the new layout of the website. I learned about the needs of the audience regarding there concerns for the job market and how to highlight that on the webpage. This has been one of the largest websites I have worked on and it was a huge learning experience to work on something of this scope.