Senior Capstone: Purdue University Residences Website Redesign
Current and prospective students, as well as their families, struggle to find the information they need when searching the Purdue University residences website.
Sponsors
Purdue University Residences
Duration
Jan 2020-May 2020
My Role
UX Designer
Project Type
Sponsored class-project
//problem space
As new and current students come to live at Purdue, they seek out the help of the Purdue University Residences website. In order to gain more knowledge about “residence halls” details as well dining. However, students are currently struggling to navigate the website and sometimes feel they are unable to find the information they seek. Due to these issues, Student Life Marketing asked us to redesign the University Residences. The redesign will be based on insights from Stakeholders, IT, and Praxis Design.
//research
We conducted a content audit, information architecture, early observations of the website, interviews, research through the anonymous forum reddit, and a competitive analysis.
Overall Takeaways
Breadcrumb dropdown menu is repetitive of the main header menu. The only difference is that the information within the dropdowns are presented in a different order.
The main header dropdown, breadcrumb dropdown menu, and right-sidebar menu all display the same or very similar information.
Sometimes the right-sidebar menu shows the main header menu information and sometimes it shows completely different information that is specific to the webpage selected.
Some webpages have very little content and most likely can be combined with other webpages.
There are dead links and blank spaces on the website.
Card Sort
Based on our interviews we created a digital card sort which influenced our final IA
card sort created by participants
old information architecture
new information architecture
//ideation
Wireframes
After multiple rounds of sketching and consulting with our stakeholders, we created wireframes. The team made sure to focus on the wireframes below for the final design since students wanted a simplistic layout, a personalized touch, and a way to compare residence halls.
//solution
Final Prototype
We iterated based off of our sketches and wireframes, combined, focusing in on the card sort and information architecture to create our final prototype for Purdue UR. We created a simplistic structure while still staying within the constraints our stakeholders provided, where current and prospective students will be able to find information easily and smoothly.
