RESPONSIVE WEBSITE

The University of Sydney is an Australian public research university with multiple libraries that provide one of the most diverse collection of resources for their students and research professionals.

The library’s website had endured many updates and add-ons through the years. It was content heavy and needed to reflect their recent business transformation of a services model, plus adopt the universities newly branded main site.

We wanted to gain context and understanding from uni students regarding their needs and current engagement with the library. A day was spent on campus for brief conversations and observations as students utilised the existing library site.

Workshops were conducted to clearly define goals, align expectations and outcomes across various stakeholders. It helped formalise many parameters including design principles which guided initial sketches through to delivery of the final responsive interface templates.

• Simplified navigation & clear visual hierarchy
• Better Information Architecture (IA) & labelling
• UI enhancements & consistency
• Display critical information transparently

18 existing personas were provided by The University of Sydney Library. Relevant specifics were extracted and integrated with the findings from our initial student engagement. Six personas (three primary and three secondary) were created to represent a wide range of students and researchers that identified key specifics including goals, needs, motivations and pain points.

Additionally, six journey maps (one for each persona) were developed and tracked the ‘ideal state’ to inform the next phase of ideation and sketching.

It was clear from our initial engagement that the preferred 'go to' device for students was their mobile phone. So the initial design process focused on a mobile first approach to elevate primary contextual task that students performed on a daily basis e.g. book a study room, loans login, live chat. This was one of the core findings of both engagement with students and stakeholders – elevation and access to key library services.

I am a big advocate for working lean and sketching quickly. I began with rough sketches and worked through the user flows informed by the journey maps.

Sketches were refined and five different designs discussed with the client which were narrowed to three.

While designing with a mobile first approach, I continually sketched other viewports to identify any responsive issues that could occur.

I identified key design differences including tools, main navigation and search functionality. Three significantly different designs (A/B/C wireframes and prototypes) were  tested to maximise participant feedback, plus clearly identify design preference in the initial round of testing.

A lean findings report was produced to inform stakeholders of the results and review the suggested iterations so all team members involved had an agreed direction for the next phase of design.

Option B (prototype) from this round of testing was the clear winner. The majority of participants preferred this option for it’s simple search functionality, plus the location of tools and being able to book services contextually.

Iterations based on participant feedback from the previous round of testing were implemented into hi-fi colour prototypes which included all primary pages to be delivered so any additional iterations could be made before moving the final designs into development.

I worked with the UI Designer and supervised the final detailed designs, plus I provided Quality Assurance (QA) with our developers including integration, testing and deployment.