CollegeScholarship
Website Redesign
👏 Role
UX Researcher
UX Designer
⏳Project Duration
12 Weeks
🧑🏽💻Tool
Figma📝Outcomes
User Research
Usability Evaluation
Background
A website, designed for college students seeking financial aid, presents resources on various funding options such as grants, scholarships, and loans.
The Challenge
The reviewed website caters to college students seeking financial aid and presents various funding options like grants, scholarships, and loans. However, the website's interface is not user-friendly, as it lacks an overall aesthetic design and proper emphasis on important actions, making it difficult for users to navigate through the website. The website presents an overwhelming amount of information all at once, making it difficult for users to process and understand, which may lead to frustration. Moreover, the website lacks a clear information hierarchy and system visibility status, and it does not anticipate user needs or guide them accordingly, making it less intuitive.
😊 Goal
The objective of this project is to enhance the website's overall appearance, create a smoother user experience, repurpose the content and information available on the site, and increase their accessibility. This website contains valuable resources required by millions of college students, and enhancing it would be highly beneficial.
Heuristic Analysis
The major usability flaws in the website are the navigation structure and its aesthetics. Overall, the website provides the needed information but it lacks in its aesthetic design, the proper emphasis on important actions, and the ability to manage a large amount of information presented.
*Usability severity percentage taking into account all the 10 heuristics of Jakob Nielsen
User Research
The approach used was creating a survey and guiding participants to complete it. Also, asking follow-up questions to gain deeper understanding. I was able to uncover their primary motivations, needs and painpoints
50%
Actively seeking Funding
I realized those actively seeking funding are the international students
70%
Ineligibility due to requirements
Ineligibility due to requirements has been a huge pain point
99%
Primary Motivation
Due to financial difficulties
🔗 Detailed view of the primary research done for the project
Persona
There are three distinct user groups of this website. See below how I represented them and how related their goals are to one another.
Persona 1 - Graduate Researcher
Persona 2 - International Student
Persona 3 - Domestic Student
User Stories
Persona 1 Graduate Researcher : As a researcher, I want to be able to find and secure funding opportunities that will allow me to continue my work and advance my research goals.
Persona 2 International Student : As an international student, I want to be able to find and apply for scholarships and funding opportunities that are specifically available to international students, so that I can afford my college education without undue financial burden.
Persona 3 Domestic Student : As a student, I want to be able to find and secure financial aid and scholarship opportunities that will help offset the cost of my college tuition.
🔗 Detailed view of the primary research done for the project
Usability Testing
Based on the heuristic evaluation conducted, the website was found to have significant usability flaws in terms of its navigation structure and aesthetics. While the website provides the necessary information, it lacks emphasis on essential actions and the ability to manage a vast amount of information displayed. As a result, the proposed user testing plan will focus on two primary objectives, which are:
😊 Objectives
Evaluating the ability of different user groups to find relevant resources, understand them, and take the desired actions.
Assessing how effectively users can quickly find and understand eligibility requirements for scholarships, a piece of information that users often find crucial in searching for scholarships.
Additionally, the effectiveness of the filter and sort feature, which was highlighted as an essential feature by users during the earlier user research, will also be evaluated. This will enable us to determine the effectiveness of the current implementation of the feature on the collegescholarships.org website. The results will provide valuable insights on how to improve the website's usability and user experience. See below the Usability Test Plan
👁️ Pre-test Highlights
- • 60% of the participants are actively searching for college tuition aid
- • 100% of the participants are college students
- • 80% of the participants are seeking for scholarship
- • 100% of the participants claimed understanding scholarship requirements as the biggest challenge
✍🏼 Study Highlights
- • 100% of participants find it difficult navigating the website
- • 100% of the participants recommended having sort and filter functionality in place
- • 100% had difficulty finding relevant information on the website
- • 100% found the website content enormous and overwhelming
- • 80% of the participants would still recommend the website to a friend
📌 Post-test Highlights
- • 100% of the participants have not previously used the website
- • 100% of the participants were dissatisfied with the website
- • 80% of the participants find searching for relevant information difficult
- • 80% of participants would still recommend the website to a friend regardless of its flaws
🤔 Think aloud comments
- • 'I feel I don't know how to use the website'
- • 'Is there a way to go back to the home page?'
- • 'These are a lot of information/content'
- • 'I don't wanna go through these 300 pages'
🔗 Detailed view of the primary research done for the project
Discussing the Solution
Based on the evaluation and research I’ve done so far, I have identified the major areas that need improvement, in order to optimize the experience of the website. Also I have priotized the issues that need fixing based on severity rating scale
| Where (Scope) | What (Task) | Issue Description | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Navigation | Search & Filter | The participants struggled to find relevant information | |
| Website Content | Search & Filter | The participants struggled to find the content understandable | |
| Layout | Search & Filter | The content on the website is enormous and the participant felt it was less interactive | |
| Search Fuctionality | Search & Filter | The search function wasn't very intuitive and participants ran into error they couldn't recover from | |
| Overall user experience | Search & Filter | The overall experience of the participants was disastifying |
Navigation
For the existing website, It was an unending nest of information, with no clear structure guiding users to information they seek. But After coming up with an IA, the sections were reorganized to highlight and guide users to the available list of scholarships, loans, and grants. The resource page was also made to be easily accessible, so users could find all the information they need about any resource they seek, without any confusion or difficulty
Before.
After.
Search Functionality
The search function was not user-friendly, lacking clear sorting and filtering options and being quite confusing to navigate. Furthermore, the search results were presented in an unending scroll format with minimal user control. I improved the search functionality by making it more intuitive and providing clear sorting and filtering options. Additionally, displaying popular searches that could assist users in finding what they are looking for.
Before.
After.
Layout
The arrangement of the content is ineffective, confusing and unappealing, which has a direct impact on the user experience making it difficult to navigate, find information and complete tasks. most of the pages are cluttered and overcrowded and there wasn't good uses of white space. the clutter actually slowed down the website as it was observed when we try scrolling to the end of the pages.
Before.
After.
I prioritized simplicity, consistency and user friendliness in the design, so it is easy to navigate, visually appealing and organized in a logical and intuitive way. I also prioritized the needs and make it easy for them to find the information they are looking for.
Conclusion
A variety of UX methods were utilized to enhance the website's usability and overall user experience. The heuristic evaluation helped to identify the website's major usability issues, while user research and usability testing provided valuable insights into the users' needs, behaviors, and preferences. Additionally, other UX methods were employed to create a more intuitive and user-friendly website, such as improving the search functionality, providing clear sorting and filtering options, and improving the findability of information. The ultimate objective of this project was to enhance the website's appearance, make the user experience smoother, and increase the accessibility of the valuable resources available on the site. Through this study, the website was able to undergo significant improvements that will greatly benefit the millions of college students who rely on it for financial aid information.
