Seattle Central College Redesigning COVID-19 Page

The current COVID-19 Update page failed to effectively navigate users and provide the information they needed to cope with an uncertain situation surrounding COVID-19. It also caused users' undue worry and the increase of inquiries for the student service departments.

How can we increase ease of use of the website?

How can we allow users to access the information they need more easily?

The COVID-19 outbreak and campus closure was unprecedented event. I decided to employ competitive analysis as the first research method to learn how other schools were managing this situation and have a better understanding of the college operation during the pandemic.

Competitors

Goals

• Identify what competitors offer as primary information
• Learn how they organize high volume information
• Evaluate the design patterns, visual elements, interaction opportunities to determine best practice

Findings

Strengths	Weaknesses
The current campus status and school safety procedure were the top two primary information A large amount of information was nicely categorized. Accordion forms were used to provide a large amount of information while keeping the design clean FAQ page was utilized to provide additional or miscellaneous information to answer more specific questions users may have.	Large images took a lot of space, which made the main page less informative Unfamiliar or unclear words may confuse users, such as “COVID-19 Ready,” “Coug Life,” etc. Too much text made it hard for users to scan the page and find the information they need quickly

Understanding users' needs and problems from multiple aspects was crucial in a chaotic situation that none of us had experienced before. I decided to send out online user surveys and conduct user interviews on Zoom.

Goals

• Identify primary and secondary information that users are looking for
• Understand users' concerns and pain points during the pandemic

Methods

User Survey	Contextual Interview
Gather data quickly and flexibly from a large population of users (n=20)	Collect qualitative, observed data (n=6)

Participant Types

current students, faculty, employees and people outside of school

Findings

1. Expectations & Preferences

The following items are essential information that users want to know

• Primary information:
  Campus status, class status, campus operation procedures, safety measures
• Secondary information:
  College re-opening plan, resources for students/faculties, financial/mental health support, remote learning support

2. Problems and Concerns

• 2 interview participants expressed their concerns that they might be missing out on some important information about the school, but don't know what they need to know
• 30% of survey/interview participants were concerned about the quality of remote learning
• 40% of survey/interview participants expressed their anxiety and worries about the uncertain situation
• 15% of participants were concerned about the tuitions and their financial situations
• Information is not often up-to-date or they can't tell if the information is updated in a timely manner

I conducted usability testing with 6 representative users to evaluate the quality of the original design. I first allowed the participants to explore the site to collect their impressions and feedback on the page. I then gave participants tasks to find the essential information, which I identified from the survey and interview findings, to evaluate the ease of use of the original design.

Goals

• Learn users' initial impressions and satisfaction with the original design
• Identify design problems that prevent users from finding information quickly
• Establish an initial benchmark to measure usability and user satisfaction

Findings

The most critical issue was that all participants failed to find the essential information or took a significant amount of time to find it.

Successes and Failures Per Task

Problem	Severity/Scope
1. Scattered Information The information was not categorized, and each information was randomly placed all over the page. Since there were no category names, users had to read each item from top to bottom until they find the information they were looking for.	Severity: High Scope: High
2. Unclear visual hierarchy Since the page barely had a visual hierarchy such as titles and headings, images/graphics, or color code, users were not able to scan the page to anticipate where the information that they need was located. All participants went through each item from the top until they find the information they were looking for.	Severity: High Scope: High
3. Too much text and complicated words The page was densely packed with too much text. Participants had to spend a significant amount of time reading large bodies of text to find the information. Some participants had difficulties with reading paragraphs that contain complicated/unfamiliar words.	Severity: High Scope: Medium

Before moving to the design phase, I set design goals by specifying my initial design goal.

Quick access to primary information	Keeping users updated with primary information is essential in this circumstance. The new design should prioritize the primary information and allow users to easily access it.
Logical and effective content organization	Organizing the content in a way that makes the most logical sense to the users will contribute to optimizing the site's navigation
Scannable content	Make the page more easily scannable by utilizing a clear visual hierarchy, graphics, etc.
Up-to-date information	Providing the latest information is crucial to reduce users' undue worry under constantly changing situations. It is also important to let users know the information on the website is correct and up-to-date

Based on the findings from user research, I organized the data and information, prioritized features, and established a logical site structure and page layout. Since I was designing specifically for the COVID-19 Update page, my main focus was to categorize, prioritize, and map out the information to achieve the most logical page layout instead of building a whole site structure.

Findings

Primary information on the main page	Campus status Class status Health and safety (campus operation protocols, safety measures, campus reopening plan, etc.) Latest update from school

Sub Categories

Remote Learning Support	Get ready for remote learning How to use Canvas Tutoring & student learning support IT support
Faculty / Employee Support	Working prograss
COVID-19 Resources	Mental health Basic life support Unemployment worker retraining Technology resources
Student Services & Contact	List of student service divisions Contact information
FAQ	Millennials and additional information

Based on the design sketch, I crafted a lo-fi prototype using Figma. To allow users to easily navigate and increase the accessibility of the website, I decided to employ "Quick Links" where users can find the most frequently used links quickly. To help users find it more easily, I conducted A/B testing and determined the best place for the 'Quick Links.'”/mark>.

• Due to proximity and time restrictions, I decided to mainly focus on designing for the primary user - current and incoming students - in this project. If I had more time, I would conduct further user research with faculty and employees to achieve a better inclusive design that works for all user types.
• Since the goal of this project was to redesign only the COVID-19 Update page, the content outside of this page was out of scope. If I had more time, I would reexamine this final design by considering the content and site structures associated with the entire Seattle Central website as well as the Seattle Colleges website to make the design work as a whole website rather than just a single page.

• User surveys and contextual interviews with participants representing various user types helped me understand the needs and pain points of different user archetypes. While they helped me determine how to prioritize and organize a large amount of information, they also made me realize the importance and difficulty of achieving inclusive design.
• The most challenging was conducting user research remotely due to the pandemic. When I conducted usability tests on Zoom, I was not able to observe the participants' behaviors properly such as their facial expressions or eye movements, etc. I figured out the way to get the most out of it by asking them to think out loud during the session.
• This project made me realize the importance of iterative design evaluations and refinements to fix emerging errors and create the best end results.