Project Overview

Project Name: State of Nevada Department of Education Website Redesign
Role: UX Designer and Researcher
Date: March - September 2023
I collaborated with the State of Nevada Department of Education (NDE) in partnership with Insight to revamp their website. This project involved a comprehensive analysis and redesign of the existing site, the development of a content strategy guide, and the migration of content to a new CMS. Additionally, Insight executed a complete overhaul of the department's brand, introducing a fresh logo and brand guide intended for integration into the redesigned website. My contributions to the project focused on UX research, content analysis, and the strategic redesign and reorganization of the website's information architecture.

Due to the confidential nature of certain aspects of the project, I am unable to provide complete details. However, I am excited to showcase my design process and highlight key findings that shaped the project's overall direction.

Project activities:
  1. Project Planning
  2. Analyzing the Existing Website
  3. Redesigning the Website
  4. UI Contributions
  5. Content Strategy and Training

Project Planning

During this project, the Insight team comprised a Project Manager, a UX Manager, a Senior UI Designer, and myself as the Junior UX Designer.
‍
My primary responsibility during this beginning phase of the project was to plan the UX activities schedule for the entire project duration. This task presented a significant challenge as I lacked context regarding the time required for various UX activities when working with clients. While I had a general idea of the activities we needed to do, I was unsure about their durations and how to effectively communicate with clients regarding interview setups, scheduling timelines, and other logistics.
Navigating these uncertainties required me to seek guidance from experienced UX teammates who were not directly involved in the project. Their insights helped me gain a better understanding of the timeframes and logistics associated with the planned activities.

In addition to creating the project schedule, I took the initiative to set up the project team's file structure, notes system, and document organization. This ensured that project-related information was easily accessible and well-organized throughout the duration of our collaboration with NDE

Analyzing the Existing Website

Interviews
Stakeholder Interviews
Our team started our research into the existing website with stakeholder interviews. It was my responsibility to create the interview document which I made sure included team introductions, project background, interview purpose, and questions.

My goal for these interviews was to discover stakeholder pain points, objectives, needs, and success criteria for the website overhaul.

As a team we met with leadership from various departments within NDE. By facilitating and participating in these sessions, I honed my ability to interview multiple participants in one interview, steer discussions back on track, and gather as much information as possible during the time we were granted.
User Interviews
The process for the user interviews was similar to the stakeholder interviews. I created the document used for the interviews with the goal of understanding how users interacted with the website, uncovering their goals and pinpointing pain points.

We met with teachers, the president of the Nevada State Board of Education, a parent of a student in Nevada, and a current student.
After the Interviews
After the stakeholder and user interviews were concluded I synthesized all of the notes that each Insight team member had taken and began to find the common themes. I then organized a workshop with the Insight team to further distill and agree upon the most common challenges, goals, and feedback our participants had mentioned.
Surveys
I was tasked with developing and distributing surveys to NDE employees and Board of Education members. These surveys incorporated System Usability Scale questions and open-ended inquiries to gather comprehensive feedback.
Google Analytics Review
The NDE website had thousands of pages. I utilized the sites analytics to find the most visited pages and usage patterns. Notably, I found that educator licensure pages are by far the most visited. Through this review, I also uncovered hundreds of pages with minimal traffic (almost 0 visitors).
Main Takeaways from the Research Activities
Navigation
  1. The navigation is complex and contains an overwhelming number of links.
  2. Navigation structure mirrors NDE's internal hierarchy, posing challenges for external users.
  3. Absence of breadcrumbs.
  4. Ineffective search functionality.
  5. Users struggle to locate information, leading to increased calls and emails to NDE employees.
Content
  1. Many pages are just walls of text.
  2. Content is dense and jargon-filled, hindering comprehension for the general public.
  3. Links throughout the website, are long, nondescript, and inconsistent.
Design
  1. The design is not focused on students and feels irrelevant and outdated.
  2. Website lacks mobile responsiveness.
  3. System Usability Scale score was 49, indicating significant usability issues.

Redesigning the Website

While the Insight team was responsible for tackling the branding redesign, my role mostly centered on improving the user experience, refining the sites information architecture, and organizing the content for the website revamp.
Competitive Analysis
To kick off the redesign process I completed a competitive analysis. During the stakeholder and user interviews, participants were asked about other education websites they frequent and find appealing. Their responses and my own additional research resulted in a list of websites to use for analysis.
Findings
The websites I reviewed shared several noteworthy features:
  1. Minimal and Intuitive Navigation: Most sites boasted a streamlined and user-friendly navigation system, facilitating easy exploration and access to information.
  2. Audience-Oriented Organization: A majority of the sites have a navigation that is organized with specific user groups in mind, like students, teachers, and administrators.
  3. Student-Centric Design: Almost all of the sites had a design that highlighted students and teachers.
  4. Relevance and Timeliness: Content across the analyzed websites was clearly kept current, ensuring users are accessing up-to-date information.
The Navigation
Taking charge of the navigation redesign posed some initial challenges. One being the vast amount of essential information inherent to a website like NDEs. It was difficult to balance having information be easily accessible and overwhelming users with an overly cluttered navigation. Figuring out where to start felt daunting at first, but I jumped in, knowing clarity would come with action.

My process for redesigning the navigation went like this:
Understand & Prioritize
Reorganize
Test
Present
Understand & Prioritize
To start this process I first took a look at the navigation and the fist level of content to familiarize myself with everything.

I then facilitated workshops with project stakeholders to review and discuss the pages within the navigation. Together, we examined the purpose, target audience, and priority of each page, which enabled us to identify and determine which pages are unnecessary. Additionally, leveraging insights from Google Analytics and stakeholder interviews, we pinpointed the most critical pages that warranted prominent placement within the navigation menu.
Reorganize
I began the reorganization phase by first removing the unnecessary pages to declutter the navigation and adding a few high-traffic pages to ensure easy accessibility to that information. It was also important that I reworded some links for clarity. We then as a team decided to structure the main navigation around three primary user groups; Educators, Students and Families, and Community. We highlighted key links within each category and also created a sub-navigation for general information.
Test
To see how well our new navigation worked, we put together a tree test. This asked participants to tackle tasks that were identified as important. We sent this test out to NDE and Insight employees to get diverse perspectives. The results from this helped us to refine the navigation further.
Present
After sharing the updated navigation with stakeholders, we tweaked it based on their feedback, ensuring it aligned with their project goals and user needs. This iterative process led to a more user-friendly navigation system, making it easier for visitors to find what they need on the website.

This was the navigation after testing and user feedback. Here you can see the link menu that opens when you click on an audience. This design was only meant to get the ideas of the navigation across to stakeholder.

UI Contributions

Collaborating closely with the UI Designer, I provided insights on homepage content and layout. I crafted the mobile experience based on the new design, ensuring it was user-friendly on all devices. I also worked on refining mockups to maintain consistency across pages. Throughout development, I supported the team, ensuring our design vision translated into the final product.

Content Strategy and Training

The last part of our engagement with NDE that I was involved with was the content strategy and training portion.
Content Strategy
I helped to lead workshops with NDE offices to dive deep into their content needs and goals. Together, we explored what their content aimed to achieve and who it was intended for. In cases where content was lacking, we brainstormed ideas for new additions to ensure a comprehensive and informative website. These sessions also served as a platform to introduce participants to user-friendly content practices, making sure everyone was on board with creating content that resonated with users. Additionally, I contributed to crafting a content strategy document aimed at guiding NDE in creating clear and engaging content
Training
Insight was also to provided tailored training sessions for NDE employees on effective content creation. To ensure the training met everyone's needs, I designed a survey to understand participants' learning styles and preferences. To further assist my teammate who was creating and conducting the training, I crafted a user journey for the main trainee persona. Through these efforts, we ensured that NDE was equipped with the knowledge and skills to produce content that truly resonated with their audience, contributing to a more user-friendly website experience.

Final Thoughts

Reflecting on this project journey, it's clear that navigating through countless tasks and decisions was no small feat. My biggest challenge throughout this project was knowing that every decision carried the weight of potential mistakes. However, through this experience, I've learned that progress demands action, even in the face of uncertainty. With the help of my amazing manager I learned it is essential to not to let the fear of making mistakes hinder forward momentum. Instead, embrace the possibility of errors as part of the learning process and just get started.