User Research, IA, UX
This site was planned, designed, and built at LimeRed Studio for University of Illinois Chicago Recruitment. My role as UX Architect was to lead user research and create site architecture focused on both the end-users and UIC's internal needs. Deliverables included wireframes, a high fidelity prototype, final site map, user guide, and user training for the UIC Admissions team.
Creative Director: Brett Casey
Critical requirements were gathered by conducting in-depth interviews with all major user groups of the site: Undergraduate, Graduate, Transfer, International, and Professional students. Before this began, however, these user groups had to be clearly defined and assigned a priority ranking during our initial discovery session with UIC.
I collected feedback about their first impression of the site, application process, and thoughts on how UIC compared to other universities they had/were looking at.
The feedback gathered during user interviews indicated that students were having trouble understanding the application process and what materials they needed to apply. The solution I proposed included a content audit of the existing site, reorganizing the information into a step-by-step checklist, and reflecting the checklist progress in the primary navigation. This was simplified even more by creating two broader user groups, Undergraduate Students and Graduate & Professional.
UIC was going through a rebrand before the start of the build. This left their current site looking stale and dated. UIC was sitting on a dated CMS and needed to improve usability for themselves as well. This resulted in a complete UI overhaul in addition to usability. This website was the first online representation of the new brand.
The website now creates two distinct experiences for Undergraduate and Graduate & Professional Students. It offers a clear path to apply and a high impression Explore UIC section to give all user groups a clear picture of what life on campus is like!
During the website build, I also helped design a series of supplemental admissions brochures to work with their new branding and admissions guide.