DSL website redesign

Client: Digital Scholarship Lab at Michigan State University

Project Type: UX Design and Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design

Software Used: Adobe XD, Marvel, Optimal Workshop

Project Overview

During this project my team and I were tasked with redesigning the Digital Scholarship Lab’s website at MSU. The lab offers many different types of technology to help students with projects so we wanted to make sure our site reflected and organized this information in the best way. Aside from the technology that is offered, the space is an interdisciplinary place that people can freely use as well as reserve rooms to work. There was a lot of technical information that we had to present in a coherent and understandable fashion.

Process

We first started out by touring the DSL and understanding its functionality. Then we conducted stakeholder interviews as well as initial user interviews which were mainly with students and professors. After we got an understanding of the basics, we started sketching and brainstorming. We then realized this project had a lot of information that had to be organized correctly. So, to do this we went to our users. We conducted user research card sorting activities with around 30 people using Optimal Workshop to help us organize the navigation and site organziation. We also constructed personas and affinity diagrams. After we did this we fit the puzzle pieces together to create our final design.

Because of the constraints of the semester, we only had time for one iteration. We used Figma to create our final mockup and presented our design to our stakeholders. About a year later, our design as well as other student groups’ designs were used in the official rebrand of the DSL website which you can see here.

Lessons Learned

  1. This is the type of project where UX Research is so important. I learned you need to understand to the best of your ability what people use the website and the space for so that you can best tailor the information to them.

  2. Card sorting came in handy with this one. When you have to organize a lot of information, it is helpful to make sure you get users input.

  3. This one of my first UX projects as a student and from that alone, my world opened up and I was exposed to all of these great user research experiences as well as design experiences.