The document summarizes how user research shaped the redesign of a university's central web portal. Through activities like card sorting, usability testing, and online surveys, researchers learned students found the original portal disorganized and difficult to navigate. User feedback informed the new portal's information architecture, navigation structure, and streamlined homepage. The research ensured the redesign centered the student experience. It demonstrated how user research is critical to developing digital services that users truly value.
How user research shaped the thinking towards developing our institutions central web portal
1. HOW USER RESEARCH SHAPED THE
THINKING TOWARDS DEVELOPING
OUR INSTITUTION'S CENTRAL WEB
PORTAL
BRENDAN OWERS
@BRENDANOWERS
2. WHAT WILL BE COVERED
• Background and context
– Shaping a new information architecture (IA)
• User Research (UX) activities: user interface (UI) and
navigation development
• Impact
• Reflections
4. MyEd
• 2003: MyEd launched
• …some upgrades later
• 2017: uPortal 4.3
(an open source enterprise
portal framework)
“…a gateway to web-based services within and beyond the University
and offers a personalised set of content with single sign on to key
University services”
5. A DIGITAL EXPERIENCE WHICH MAKES THE USER
FEEL THE UNIVERSITY’S ONLINE ENVIRONMENT IS
CENTERED AROUND THEM
6. WHAT WE KNOW
• “I can cope with MyEd but it took me a while to get used
to it”
• “It’s very disorganised. It’s full of sections with
unhelpful headings and most parts aren’t relevant”
• “The point is not having all that information over you
when you search for something specific”
• “It’s been 3 years and 8 times out of 10 I click in the
wrong place in MyEd”
9. NEW MYED: A USER CENTRED PORTAL
• New technical framework (uPortal5 and a new React
frontend)
• Migration of current portal content
• Improved user experience, centred around student
needs
10. PRIORITIES…
• Where to focus our effort?
• Workshop to establish priorities
• Priorities:
– Organisation of content
– Labelling and terminology
– Finding content
– Mobile
12. IA AND VOCABULARY – OPEN CARD SORT
• Goal: explore how different
students prioritise and group
portal tasks, and label those
tasks, and their rationale for their
choices
https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/card-sorting.html
13. IA AND VOCABULARY – HYBRID DELPHI SORT
• Goal: exposing our consolidated sort to more users, to
get to a stable model, and an understanding of the
reasoning and needs behind the groupings and labelling
15. STRUCTURED USER TESTING - NAVIGATION
• Method:
– Usability testing
• Purpose:
– Test navigation patterns and
link behaviour
• Findings:
– Students were comfortable with the
different link behaviours
– Students were observed repeatedly
scanning through the menu categories.
https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-
tools/methods/usability-testing.html
16. STRUCTURED USER TESTING - HOMEPAGE AND FAVOURITES
• Method:
– Usability testing
– Interview questions
• Purpose of research:
– To understand whether the content on the new
homepage met students needs
• Findings:
– Confirmed that the proposed content was correct
– No additional content required
– Strong support for favouriting functionality
17. RESEARCH AT SCALE
• Early research with small numbers of students
• Online activities to engage large numbers of students
• Online card sort
• Tree test
• Preview of the new service
Tool used: https://www.optimalworkshop.com/optimalsort
19. Tree Test
Testing the navigation structure
Do users find information?
How directly do they find
information?
20.
21.
22. IMPACT
New MyEd:
• Content organised in ways that make sense to users
• A new navigation approach
• A decluttered, relevant home page
• A cleaner, faster mobile experience
The team:
• Open minded, not making assumptions
• Confidence gained in running co-creation activities
• Ability to analyse feedback and results
• UX embedded into service delivery
23. WORKING WITH GREAT PEOPLE :)
• Mary Elder
• Mairi Fraser
• Leigh Gordon
• Thalia Nikolaidou
• Adam Wheavil
• Peter Jackson
• Nicola Dobieka
• Sonia Virdi
• Annie Adam
• Marissa Cummings
• Qais Patankar
• Chris Copner
• Ranald Swanson
• Tim Gray
• Karen Stirling
• Michael Sun
• Dani Migliorelli
• Ben Sheffield
24. REFLECTIONS
• UX was a critical part of the project
– Learnt what students use and value
• …and implemented it
• Any user research is better than no research
• Great way to get buy-in
• Any project/service can take these approaches
• Project is evidence that its worth investing in the time to
organise, run and analyse these activities
– They do take time = better end product
Recent blog posts from the MyEd Service
- Funded in alignment in working towards improving student experience
•The project that I am going to talk about today is the first step in implementing this.
•Primarily a technical and migration project
•Very limited scope to redevelop content
•Challenge was to decide where to focus our effort, in order to deliver maximum benefit, within the constraints of the project.
•Plenty of potential areas – what would have most impact?
•Workshop with the whole project team, plus a colleague from the UX team to
•review the existing research, and identify the areas causing most pain, that could be addressed in this project. Came up with 4 :
•Next step – plan and undertake user research
•Talk first about the work to address first two priorities, by establishing a user developed information architecture and vocabulary
•Goal – first steps towards an information architecture, asking users to group and label tasks and information that they might use MyEd for, in ways that made sense to them.
•70 cards, three pairs of students.
•Output: three sets of grouped tasks
•Surprising amount of consistency
•Sub groups
•Limited relabelling
•Next – Hybrid Delphi sort
•Goal – to get to a more stable model, and a better understanding of the reasoning and needs behind the groupings and labelling
•Another 3 pairs of students, this time consecutively
•Top level categories fairly stable, still a clear requirement for a hierarchical structure.
•Output:
•Emerging information architecture and vocabulary
•Basis to start the Ui and in particular the navigation design
•Next stage: starting the design phase
•UX lead, plus member of design team, plus 3 student interns, sketching, using previous research, emerging IA, best practice, mobile first.
•Generated initial wireframes that we tested with students:
•Pop-up testing, taking a simple task set out to students, and using paper prototypes
•Low cost, low overhead, very suitable for quick iterative design loops
•Opportunity for the project team to talk directly with students
•4 iterations, making changes as we went
•Confirmed initial design approach
•next phase of research, doing more detailed investigation into specific aspects of the design using structured usability testing
•I’m going to talk about some of the areas we explored next.
•Online card sort – using Optimal Sort, part of Optimal Workshop Suite.
•Hybrid sort – used the output from the workshops, but students able to add and change
•Great engagement – over 1000 students
•Output:
•Huge amount of data – over 14000 data points to analyse
•Highest placed cards for the most part in the categories we provided
•Consistency across demographics
•However, the frequencies for some of the highest placed cards quite low, with less than 50% of students, meaning we also have to give careful consideration to 2nd and 3rd highest placed cards
•Output - an IA and a draft navigation structure.
•Treetest – checking whether users could actually find information in the structure they had created
•Online, using Optimal Workshop again
•Upload navigation tree, and a series of tasks for users to complete
•Results show you whether users can find the information, and how easily they find it.
•Most tasks OK, some were problematic, so we had to investigate these further.
•Where did all this user research get us?
•A new improved MyEd:
•Content now organised around users, in grouping that they understand
•A new navigation approach
•The mega-menu – quick and easy way see what is available
•Direct links from the menu
•No more tabs – no need to load content you don’t need
•Decluttered relevant front page
•Clean, quick simple mobile view
•Changes are quite subtle – we’ve no made massive changes to what it looks like, but how you interact with it is very different. Would not have been achieved without the user research – definitely took us in directions that we would not have gone in without that. Foundation work for work we will do in future.
•It was an incredible valuable part of the project, and definitely led us in directions we would not otherwise have gone
•We would have liked to do more, and there are areas where we didn’t do research, and should have, but any research is better than none.
•It’s really helpful to get buy-in – it’s much easier to tell someone their content won’t be on the front page if you have evidence to back it up
•We had help from our UX service, and that was great, but it’s still possible to do without that support. There are lots of resource out there, and towards the end, the project team doing it ourselves
•Thoroughly recommend the approach.