I-LABS Website
ROLE
UX Researcher
DESCRIPTION
This is a project I worked on at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS), University of Washington.
I was tasked with the UX research and iteration of the institute's website, in order to improve its overall usability.
DURATION
Jan 2022 - Jun 2022, 6 months
SUPERVISOR
Misty Weaver
TOOL
Google Analytics, UXtweak, Optimal Workshop,
WAVE Tool, WCAG, Figma
Brief
I-LABS at UW is the world's leading interdisciplinary research center for early learning and brain development. Their website not only provides their theoretical research and academic information to professional scholars, but also provides theoretical and scientific guidance about children's education to parents, educators, and policymakers in the community. However, the current website lacks the necessary organization to meet the needs of its visitors.
Over the course of 6 months, I was working as a UX researcher to evaluate their current website, conduct user research, and issue improvement recommendations.
The Process
UX Audit
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Google Analytics
- Accessible Evaluations
User Research
- Secondary Research
- User interviews
- Tree testing
Recommendations
- Main Site
- Outreach
- Content Strategy
Google Analytics
Audience Statistics
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Most users are from:
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the US, UK, Canada, Philippines, India, China, Australia, Mexico, Spain, and South Africa
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Most used languages:
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English, Chinese, Spanish, French, and German
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the current multilingual versions I-LABS website provides: English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Somali
Website Statistics
- In the past year (JAN 2021 - JAN 2022)
16 pages
Had over 1000 views
83 pages
Had over 100 views
1200 pages
Had less than 5 views
80% of the users are new visitors. They have higher bounce rates than returning users and spend less time on each session they visit.
I-LABS Top-viewed Pages
Outreach top-viewed pages
The top pages are all for Learning Modules
Other pages are not visited at this frequency
To view the top 100 or find the "sections" that are high traffic /above 500 views:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MJlP2tlv055dhchV14MSUfBgSxi-et9-?usp=sharing
Literature Reviews
To provide recommendations that follow standards and best practices, I conducted literature reviews and seek support from NNg to convey the stakeholders. I’ve highlighted some key articles in this section and linked them to individual sources with the recommendations.
To view the detailed review:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jFXp3VaheKTLTcZq3eLpaKn-LzmdzMO_nfrDPe7u1TU/edit?usp=sharing
User Research
I steered four user interviews based on the present website.
After that, tree testing was conducted on information architecture.
User Feedback
4 participants were interviewed: one linguistic graduate student, two parents, one policymaker
To view the User interview Script:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dPeRyLwPdT6I43CXoYufhGg8MJ6QFr3xJFGTlejWmpk/edit?usp=sharing
Findings and Suggestions
The content here is under construction.
To view the full report, visit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dCOtp4TYwm61SHpCPuRD1r0Iet9RrNJ2eBXCUxaO4c/edit?usp=sharing
Or reach out to learn more about this project.