UX Research - university website

Use of data

• Google Analytics - who visits the website, broken down by gender and age, from which devices, from which pages, after which phrases entered in the search engine, which pages are most frequently visited, what is the bounce rate, what devices are visitors using, on which pages there is a link to our site.
• Previous recruitments numerical data - some data may coincide with the data from Google Analytics, e.g. demographics, which fields of study are the most popular
• Survey in the recruitment system - what information applicants need, what's wrong with the current site, what's good with the current site.
• Internal search engine - what is searched for in the internal search engine.

Statements from the authorities

Website vision according to university managers. The main goals of the site. Graphic form, language of communication, website functions.

Conversations with employees

• Dean's office staff - repeated questions from outsiders, students, employees
• Department responsible for teaching - repeated questions, e.g. during recruitment from candidates
• Secretariat - content that employees are asked about, e.g. logotype file, graphic guidelines
• International cooperation - questions from people who want to study under exchange programs: foreign and Polish students

Website goals

Defining the website's goals taking into account different target groups.

Personas

Preparation of several personas depicting selected target groups.
End goal: what does the persona want to achieve with our website?
Motivation: why is this person interested in our website?
Barriers: what irritates her and may discourage her from using our website?
Opportunities: what could increase her interest in our site?

FGI with students

Focus interviews with several groups of students. In the case of the first years, questions about recruitment, what was the problem, what information was missing. How they tried to find information that they could not find on the site.
What are they looking for on the website, what information are they missing? According to them, the visual aspect of the website as it is and what it should be. Ideas about what can be found on the page's content, functionality.

Tasks performed by users

Taking into account data collected from IDI interviews, focus meetings, internal search queries and Google.

Card sorting

Based on the page titles of the current page and new subpages the content of which was obtained from the research. For some names, a short comment on the card may be useful about what the given subpage will be about.

Structure prototype

Preparation of the initial information architecture for the presented content. Mainly based on the groups that were created during the sorting of cards. The tasks performed by the user should also be taken into account. How the information should be arranged so that it intuitively reaches the target subpage.

Reverse card sorting based on tasks

Checking the prepared preliminary design of the structure. The user gets a list of tasks to be performed on the page. He should indicate how he thinks the navigation would take place and what he would choose in turn to receive the necessary information. At this stage, apart from modifying the structure, there may also be changes to the names of some subpages (e.g. when it turns out that they are incomprehensible to the user)

Clickable website mockup

Preparation of a website with simplified graphics including planned modules and the entire menu structure. During tests, checking what the user thinks about the website, what he expects to find under individual menu items and modules. Checking on the basis of prepared page navigation tasks.

The website www.asp.krakow.pl was prepared by them

Editor
Stanisław M. Stanuch

Developer
Krzysztof Król

Graphics
Filip Handzel
Krzysztof Walencik

Concept
Bogdan Achimescu
Kamil Kamysz
Patrycja Maksylewicz
Mariusz Front
Aleksy Pawluczuk

Source university website.

Below are thumbnails of selected pages from the research report.