University Usability Report — University of Connecticut
This is the last exercise of the prework we needed to prepare for the Ironhack UI/UX Design Bootcamp. For this challenge, we were given a list of some university websites. We had to run a usability testing, discover some pain points and then offer a solution which solves these pain points. The university chosen was The University of Connecticut.
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land grant, National Sea Grant and National Space Grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, United States.
The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, Connecticut, approximately a half hour’s drive from Hartford and 90 minutes from Boston. It is a flagship university that is ranked as the best public national university in New England and is tied for №18 in Top Public Schools and №56 in National Universities in the 2018 U.S. News & World Report rankings. UConn has been ranked by Money Magazine and Princeton Review top 18th in value. The university is designated “R-1: Doctoral Universities — Highest Research Activity” with the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education classifying the student body as “More Selective”, its most selective admissions category. The university has been recognized as a Public Ivy, defined as a select group of publicly-funded universities considered to provide a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League.
UConn is one of the founding institutions of the Hartford, Connecticut/Springfield, Massachusetts regional economic and cultural partnership alliance known as New England’s Knowledge Corridor. UConn was the second U.S. university invited into Universitas 21, an elite international network of 24 research-intensive universities, who work together to foster global citizenship. UConn is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. UConn was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two brothers who donated the land for the school. In 1893, the school became a land grant college. In 1939, the name was changed to the University of Connecticut. Over the next decade, social work, nursing, and graduate programs were established, while the schools of law and pharmacy were also absorbed into the university. During the 1960s, UConn Health was established for new medical and dental schools. John Dempsey Hospital opened in Farmington in 1975.
Competing in the American Athletic Conference as the Huskies, UConn has been particularly successful in their men’s and women’s basketball programs. The Huskies have won 21 NCAA championships. The UConn Huskies are the most successful women’s basketball program in the nation, having won a record 11 NCAA Division I National Championships (tied with the UCLA Bruins men’s basketball team) and a women’s record four in a row (2013–2016), plus over 40 conference regular season and tournament championships. UConn also owns the two longest winning streaks of any gender in college basketball history.
The Interview
For the usability testing, I asked my friend Anja. She is a recent graduate and she’s actually looking for a Master’s Degree.
I informed Anja beforehand what I needed from her.
These were the tasks I had in store for her:
- First impression of the website in 7 seconds.
- Thoughts on the navigation of the website.
- Find the School Mascot.
- Find out if the school offers foreign language instructions for Arabic.
- Find the nearest airport.
First Impression
“The website looks clearcut, very standard. All seems in one place.”
Thoughts on the navigation
She said that the navigation looks very straight forward. She liked the dropdown of the menu which had the submenu links but also a picture and some short paragraph related to the contents of the menu you were hovering at. She did have a hard time to notice the top nav bar located on top, to the left of the screen. She said they were too small and feels like being on top of the logo, they get lost.
Find the School Mascot
This was an easy task for her. She found that in two clicks Athletics > VISIT UCONN HUSKIES WEBSITE (a button which appears on the landing page of Athletics) under 20 seconds.
Foreign language instructions for Arabic
After the School Mascot, we proceeded with the next task which was to find out if the school offers any foreign language instructions for Arabic. She did that with 2 clicks in 30 seconds. But she kinda cheated I’d say because she used the A-Z index.
I asked her to repeat the task again, but this time she shouldn’t use the A-Z index. This time she achieved it in 4 clicks by going to Academics | Schools and Colleges > College of Liberal Arts and Sciences > Academics | Departments > LITERATURES, CULTURES, AND LANGUAGES. All this she did it in for 60 seconds.
Nearest Airport
The last task was the most difficult one. She spent 11 minutes and 40 seconds to find the nearest airport with 17 clicks, going back and forth the “Plan your visit” menu they had under Undergraduate Admissions.
And she did achieve that by using the Search button. This specific information was under GLOBAL AFFAIRS | Global Partnerships & Outreach.
Pain Points
I noticed a few pain points which I have listed below.
- The first pain point I find with the university websites is the overload of information. Normally I would like to find whatever I am looking for without going through menus and guessing did they place this information under here or under there.
For example, there is a CTA button “Plan you visit” not very visible at the Hero Banner in the homepage, so the user went to About Us looking for the directions, then went to the Campus Life, then Campuses. Only after these guesses, she found the “Visit Campus” under Admissions. - Another pain point would be adding some more visible content regarding the courses, programs or financial aid which are usually the things future students look for mostly.
- The top nav is easily missed on top there with that font size and over the big logo, which draws a lot of attention.
- Organize better the information there, it misses some contact info which you can easily find those without the need to going to the contact page or elsewhere.
- Add the “How to get here” section on the Visit Us page.
My Prototype
In alignment with the pain points, I have come up with this solution.
Nav Bar
First I placed the Top Nav Bar to the right side of the website. Normally it would have a bigger font.
I removed Prospective Students and Visitors, as well as the Career and Giving( which is the UConn Foundation). The reason I did this because these four remaining groups are already familiar with the website and know where to look for, instead of a Prospective Student or a Visitor which can dismiss the Top Nav Bar.
Menu
I started with the Admissions Menu, on which I added a Financial Aid. This page would cover some information students usually look for, what financial options does the university offer in general. This would help them know if they should continue to look up for programs based on financial options or not.
After that, I fixed the About Us menu. I added there the Giving / UConn Foundation and decided to call it UConn Foundation rather than Giving. Also, I added here the Careers which was located before on the Top Nav Bar and also the Visit Us and also added a Contact Us. This last one would be the page with all the contact information regarding the university.
I continued with the Campus Life, on which I removed the menu Campuses and placed it under Campus Life. I did not see necessary to have both these menus apart from each other.
Hero Banner and Form
The Hero Banner can be a background no matter its nature, static image or background video. The touch I added in here is the form You are a __ looking for ___.
Seeing that university websites have a ton load of information, I thought I could facilitate a bit the process by adding a form with a dropdown menu which would have some premade choices, including the option Other (please specify). This can be used also to collect some data and try to make our site better for users we did not think of in the first place. I find this solution very handy, as we offer directly suggestions with the dropdown choices and the smart search with suggestions.
Programs, Certificates, and Financial Aid
In case the user does not go through the Menu and the Form on the Hero Banner, they have a section with Programs, Certificates, and Financial Aid. By doing so, the user has no need to go through the menu and see where the programs, certificates, and financial aid are placed.
Events and News
Here I have made some small changes, a carousel with two chevron icons on the News and Events section. I also added a see more button to take them to the landing page of each category.
I found it more adequate to place the Events on top of the News.
Strategic Initiatives
They have some cool info on this section, so I decided to make this one bigger with bigger images and perhaps a bit more information, to give more attention and readability.
Newsletter
The website is missing a sign-up form. This can be used for all marketing purposes and would help the audience be up-to-date with whatever is happening with the university, be it a new announcement regarding a new program, a new event or anything else.
Footer
The footer felt a bit vague and was missing some crucial information as the email, phone, address of the university. After all, the user doesn’t have to go all the way to the Contact Us page, to find this generic information I listed here. Below that the user can find the social media channels of the university. To add some more relevant info to it, I included the office hours.
Some other modification I did was adding the Programs, Financial Aid, News, Events, Visit Us and a FAQ.
On the Other Important Links, I added the UConn Foundation.
Visit Us
On this page, I changed a bit the things. I moved the sidebar with the Related Links to the left, to focus more on the attention of the user on what he came here for. Readability’s flow is from the left to the right after all.
They have some content here with a picture on top of it, so I left it as it is. But after that, I added the information I found in GLOBAL AFFAIRS | Global Partnerships & Outreach. This makes it easier for the users, skipping a step.
What they had before was a link in the sidebar called Plan Your Visit. They displayed here only the information on how to arrive there by car. I did not find it necessary to go the plan your visit for this kind of information on how to get there.
Doing usability testing was way harder than I predicted. I found this exercise very challenging, as it made me go through many iterations until I found out how I wanted the pain points fixed.
