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U.S. Department of Education

The goal of this project is to reorganize, redesign and responsive website for the Department of Education. 

To achieve this goal, focus was applied to: 

  • UI Analysis & User Research

  • Information Architecture

  • Lo-Fi Wireframing & Testing

  • Hi-Fi Prototyping & Style 

  • Interactive Design

Mission Statement

Our mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.

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Proto-Persona

To begin, we hypothesized on who might be visiting this site. 

With the breadth of information on this site, a mother, Amy Anderson,  with children in two different grades felt like a good potential user.

 

Amy may visit the website to gather information on:

  • Student loan and potential grant applications

  • Information on federal college funding 

  • Information on K-12 education

Heuristic Evaluation

We conducted a heuristic evaluation of the site and found usability issues. 
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We identified navigation issues and noticed the lack of chunking created an overwhelming user experience.

Usability Testing

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We expanded user tasks to include those that Amy might complete, that includes tasks from all main tabs, Student Loans, Grants, Law & Data. This gave us more insight on more website usability. We synthesized feedback and focused on prioritized issues.

Web Annotation

What we found from our tests reinforced our initial evaluation and annotated for reference.

  • Uninspiring presentation

  • Overall lack of information discoverability

  • Link overload

Navigation Testing

We tested users on the the website navigation and found that overall, users found the site navigation overwhelming. 

 

Our users also found the site navigation confusing and acronyms / jargon used throughout the site. Because of this, users weren’t able to complete simple tasks.

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Tester Quotes: 

  • “First impression of the site, is there’s a lot of nastiness. Just a lot to look at.”

  • “Well. It’s not very great.”

  • “The whole site is irritating”

Card Sorting

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With so many links and so much jargon used throughout the site, this step in the process was intensive and required a lot of thinking and rethinking. 

I updated categories, links and consolidated content to ease navigation on a new site map.

Home Page Wireframes

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Each category provides links to related content by hovering over drop-down menus.

Moodboards

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Inspiration for this site is found in bright colors and images that align with the mission. Colors and images reflect excitement in learning and supporting all in education.

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Desktop & Mobile Prototypes

The new responsive redesigned website was completed once the final prototype was connected.

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What testers said:

  • “Thinks it’s really clear.”

  • “Pretty specific in search needs, navigation easy, header makes sense.”

  • “I love a good drop-down.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, there’s a lot of information on the site, that leads users to third party sites, making it difficult to navigate and locate information on the site. People want an easy to use, clean site that doesn’t have a lot of clutter. To achieve this, categories need to be better clarified and simplified with content better grouped within the categories. 

 

Chunking content with like content should be prioritized, followed by what type of information most people are visiting the site for. 

 

Content and copywriting throughout the site could use attention to align with the brand and make content easier to read.

©2022 by Katie Haas.

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