Understand
Preparing for work-life after college as an undergraduate is sometimes a last-minute consideration. The Career Center site has many resume-writing guides, job search tools, and interview preparation exercises, but students are discouraged by its usability experience.

📝 Research & User Interviews

20 Surveys, 5 interviews

We wanted to:

  • Discern what students need most from the site
  • Understand the difficulties in navigating the site
  • Establish what was working well for students

Key Insights

  • 70% didn't like the visual style
  • 50% usually needed to work on their resume
  • 70% found it difficult to navigate the site
  • Only 10% were satisfied with the experience

📌 Affinity Mapping

The data from our user research exposed the following patterns:

  • Difficulty navigating through resources on Student page
  • User need for navigation menu
  • Distaste for visual design
  • Not optimized for mobile use

Comparative Analysis

I examined several other university’s career centers to better understand other methods of how career center resources are organized for students and alumni.

Findings

Discoveries that shaped my direction:

  • Navigation menus typically follow a students/alumni/faculty/employer pattern
  • Visual styles were simple and consistent throughout each site

Ideate
Hypothesized solution: Implement an information architecture & top-level navigation, reorganize the site's website into digestible categories, and consolidate the visual style by defining a design system.

Information Architecture Redesign

The previous “Students” page hosted links to most of the Career Center’s resume, interview, and job search resources, but they were organized into categories that didn’t make sense to students.

I conducted an open card sort exercise with 10 students to better understand how users think about grouping the different resources that the career center site offers.

Old Students page

Dendograms

I used OptimalWorkshop to create a “best merge” dendogram by making assumptions about larger clusters based on individual pair relationships

Site map

After analyzing the results from the card sort, I organized the resources that linked from the student page into categories that made more sense to students: Networking, Professional Skills, Jobs/Internships, Interview Prep, and Resume. I created a sitemap diagram and prototype

Navigation

Using the sitemap, I implemented a global navigation menu that made more sense to students using the familiar student-alumni-faculty pattern.

Since students were unsure of what they should be working on, I included the categories derived from the previous student page in the navigation and on the home page to better engage students.

Design

I created a design system that would correct the inconsistent text and button styles on the existing pages. I applied the guide to all the pages on the site using the university color palette, light drop shadows and consistent typography to clean everything up.

(Old home page)

Wireframes

I brought my vision from low to high fidelity by incorporating the design system and feedback from stakeholders.

More redesigned pages

Validate
I conducted five 30-minute moderated remote testing sessions. These sessions helped me see some of the errors I made while putting together the prototype.

Test goals

Evaluate the ease of navigation between major sections of the site to verify that main flows were as streamlined as possible

Tasks

  • Navigate to the job search resources
  • Create an appointment with the Career Center
  • Download the Resume Guide
  • Register for an upcoming event

Iterations

Users said that the header of the home page was too busy and they would likely scroll passed it even though it contained important upcoming events.

The new header included a production-quality video that the Career Center had made to advertise all of their resources for students and alumni. The “Upcoming Events” feed was moved to a lower part of the page where it was easier to scan.

Results & takeaways

  • WCSU students were having difficulty navigating the Career Success Center site, which caused a lack of student engagement with the Career Center’s services
  • Through design thinking, I recreated the virtual Career Success Center experience by implementing an efficient information architecture and style guide
  • Students were satisfied with the new experience