GT Healthcare Sites Redesign
Creating a more clear and user-friendly website for Georgia Tech Stamps Health Services
Project Overview
Team: UX Designer, Developer, Project Manager
Duration: Sep 2022 - Dec 2022
My role: UX Designer
Problem
The UX and UI design of GT's stamps health services sites need to be improved for a better user experience while the developing platform introduces technical constraints.
Challenge
As designers, we had restricted control over the content of the sites and the scope of changes in visual design was also impacted by technical constraints.
Solution
I simplified the UX flow and rebuilt the information architecture to provide more clear information that allows faster and easier information search. And I redesigned the visual based on a design library worked on by the whole team.
COVID FAQ Page Redesign
The current COVID FAQ page is designed with the intention to reduce the cognitive overload of the viewers by asking viewers roles and their purposes to filter out and only show relevant questions.
![health.gatech.edu_coronavirus_faqs_field_audience_tid[]=1&field_subject_tid[]=11.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3d4f1e_1dd3be1162f04aba9b4b9ac1c0777d65~mv2.png/v1/crop/x_0,y_0,w_2880,h_3115/fill/w_60,h_65,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/health_gatech_edu_coronavirus_faqs_field_audience_tid%5B%5D%3D1%26field_subject_tid%5B%5D%3D11.png)
Users
Lacking Professional Background
People who visit this page are general students and faculty of Georgia Tech, which means that they normally do not have a professional background related to COVID. Therefore, they are not familiar with the topic and its derived categories.
Unspecified Purposes
Users are finding answers to their questions but they do not necessarily have a clear idea of which category their questions belong to. At the same time, they may come up with multiple questions on different topics.
Pain Points
Inaccessible Information
The current page does not show any information if the users do not submit their categories. There is also no search function that allows users to look for specific topics. To see all the content, users need to multi-select every category and submit.
Inappropriate UX Flow
Though it is helpful to identify users' roles and categories, the extra steps that ask users to submit their categories are not the most appropriate solution in this case. Role identification is most helpful when users do not need the information and functions for other roles at all and the categories can be clearly defined without lots of overlaps. However, neither scenario applies to the COVID FAQ page.
Barriers
No Control Over the Content
Because the content (i.e. questions and answers) on this page is already approved by relevant official organizations and is monitored, if I want to change anything, I will have to get approval. This would lead to an extended timeline and more input of effort.
Limited Implementing Resources
The platform the team uses for implementation and development supports limited functions and features. This somehow restricted the scope of the changes that I could make for improvements, for example, adding a search bar.
Design Process
Rebuilt Information Architecture
Considering I cannot make changes of the content, I decided to approach the problem by improving the structure to provide more clear information that enables more efficient search.
Therefore, I unpacked the all the content.
Problem: 60 FAQs putting together on the same page.
Solution: Categorize questions in terms of topics.
Rationale: When it comes to complex and mixed information, putting them together into categories can save more time for users during their searching. Meanwhile, presenting them together without filtering allows a global ctrl+F search that improves the experience when a search function by us is temporarily not available.
What I Did: Based on common knowledge and taking the categories done by the current experience as references, I re-categorized the questions by putting them into 3 categories and 10 sub-categories by using an affinity diagram.
Challenge: Lack of research to support the categorization.
Solution: Involve usability testing to validate the design.
What I Did: I conducted 3 rounds of quick user testing on this page specifically about the categorization and users think this structure makes sense to them. I also ran this by the stakeholders who are faculty working at the healthcare department of Georgia Tech to make sure this is working.
If I Had More Time: I would design specific tasks and ask the users to complete those tasks during testing to collect success rates as data to support the design.
Redesigned the Visual Layout
We also redesigned the visual elements and provided consistent design components for the whole site and I applied them to the new page.
Problem: The old UI is not visually advanced.
Solution: Unify the branding and visual design with consistent UI components.
Rationale: Presenting a consistent interface helps users familiarize with the sites and the brands and increases their efficiency during information search.
What I Did: I used accordions to show the sub-categories and applied other design components accordingly to different types of information.
If I Had More Time: I proposed a project to build the design system of the GT's website. And this is still in discussion. I would also work with the developers to figure out how to make the interactions on this page more smooth since currently it still needs extra clicks to view the information.
