Mia Mo
Joy Zhang
Rita Yu
Nicole Li
Zoe Li
U of T Student Life
As the Project Lead, I was responsible for arranging and distributing tasks to group members and most of the Figma design. Besides translating our research findings into wireframes and prototypes, I also collaborated with conducting user interviews, questionnaires and research analysis.
Sep - Dec 2022
Student Life, Health and Wellness provides a range of health services for students' physical and mental health, wellness programs and information to help support students in achieving their personal and academic goals.
The U of T Health & Wellness Department's website currently has a complex structure that makes it difficult for students to find health resources and services.
This project aims to evaluate the existing site layout, identify key usability issues, and redesign the information architecture to create a more straightforward and accessible experience for students seeking health-related support on campus.
To collect data about how U of T students think about their experience as users of this website, we utilized questionnaires and interviews as our research methods to investigate our questions.
of the users believed the function of this website was to help them book Medical Appointments and 33.3% of the users thought it was for getting health & wellness information
of the users believed their goals of using this website were mostly achieved
Some of the participants are saying:
“The website is merely presenting what information they have instead of guiding its users through them."
“The designer should be aware of the student's real needs instead of using the site to showcase as much information as possible.”
After figuring out the problems we needed to solve for the website, we used the card sorting method to help us construct a better schematic diagram.
We modified the website's information architecture based on the key findings from our card-sorting study. After modification, we used the tree testing method to test how the user experience of the new information architecture. We designed 5 tasks to test the users.
100% of the participants succeeded in the task which asked them to find physical health services
80% of the participants succeeded in the task which asked them to book an appointment with the mental health clinic
Regarding to this website's current problems, we proposed three main strategies to redesign the website
Adding hierarchies to make information organized
Highlighting the most important information and eliminating clustered blocks
Increasing appropriate visual components to make key points easier to access
Adding quick links
We moved the make an appointment link from a in-text link to be the banner, making it more standout, visible and easier to access.
The reason caused the current clustered and unclear information display is that the website does not have enough appropriate hierarchies or sub-categories.
Adding sub-hierarchy
We added a sub-hierarchy under the health and wellness department and a side navigation bar.
Once the user clicks on any of the main categories on the main page, they will be led to this page.
Currently, when the users first get on the website, there is a big yellow banner that is showing the warning information but it can not be closed.
Adding close button to provide close option to the users
In our design of modification, we believe these are important information for the users to know, so we decided to not delete them.
Instead, we added a close button for users to close it if they find it’s too annoying.
Adding icons to highlight important features
As for the visual components, we add more icons to help users to understand the headings and links.
For example, at the “Why Connect with Us” section, we change the in-text links to icon-based subheadings.
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