Emory Continuing Education Case Study

Release Date

December of 2017

Responsibilities

UX, UI & Visual Design

Tools Used:

Paper & Pen, InVision, Illustrator, Photoshop, Sketch

With thousands of registrants each year and a life span of over 60 years, Emory Continuing Education is one of the largest recognized continuing education programs in Georgia.

The main Emory Continuing Education site has had the same site and UI patterns since 2008.

Challenges

The challenges included improving the Emory Continuing Education user interface - both functionally and visually, and organizing the information architecture.

Goals

– Refine usability by changing the site’s structure, navigation, and UI elements.
– Update visual identity to enhance the new university brand.
– Solve users’ frustration and confusion when registering for courses.

Process

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Research

Taxonomy
Information Architecture restructure

Ideation

Sketches & Sitemap
New IA

Iterations

Feature breakdown &
Finalization

Research & Ideation

Before we jump into the redesign, I had to first fully understand how the user interphase worked - especially the pitfalls and successes of the site.

User Research

To begin, we had three one hour sessions with focus groups ranging between three demographics; however, I would have liked to have conducted user interviews to further the research. Overall, I did like the valuable information I learned through these sessions.

Taxonomy

Here we take a screen shot of every view and organize its various elements into categories. This will enables us keep track of all information as we reshape the user interphase.

Home

About

Courses & Certificates

Course Details

FAQ

Directions

Login

Register

Site Map

The new sitemap is created based on a new, trimmed, and organized Information Architecture. The old site was very unorganized and had randomly placed elements. The courses were sometimes duplicated in repetitive categories. To improve the website: we simplified the course schedule to four main categories, added a course library with filtering options, and added certificates to its own pages

Wireframes

With the new structure established, we begin sketching and ideating each view with variations of UI elements and structures. We then selected the best candidates based on feedback and established patterns. Here is a preview of my sketches:

Visual Identity

To update the visual identity, we added: Marriweather as the heading type, Avenir as the body and interphase font, applied a  greater range of vibrant colors, and created a slick thin set of icons.

Style Tile

Style tiles establish a direct connection with actual interface elements without defining the layout. We narrowed down the design to this pallet for the interphase.

Icons

Results

Finally we delivered UI rendered mockups of key screens sporting an updated navigation, visual identity, and functionality.

Home

The home page is more streamlined by adding a brief overview section of all parts of the site - including the courses, programs, testimonials, about, and contact options. This provides a better flow throughout the rest of the site.

Courses

We completely redesigned the courses page by adding a break-down of the categories, subjects, and a CTA. These items will directly relate to the catalog and automatically filter preferences based on the options picked.

Courses Catalog

Instead of having a bunch of categories and courses spread out, we created a catalog where users can filter based on category, subject, and more. They can register and learn more about courses directly from the catalog without having to go from page-to-page.

Courses Details

Previously, the website displayed a brief overview of each course. After registering, a view more tab would appear which provided more important information in regards to the course. To make the course details more user-friendly, we restructured the page by adding tabbed navigation to make the page shorter and to store all the information on a single page.

Programs

The programs page is a simplified version of the courses page. This shows: the title, description, date, and buttons to register or learn more.

Events

Before, the events were embedded into the courses which made it extremely confusing and difficult to find. To fix this problem, we created an events page displayed in a list format, which made it easier to see when and where the events are taking place.

About

Previously the about page was just a description of ECE. Now,  it has been redesigned to inspire, ensure trust, give information, and lead customers to the action when they are registering for courses.

Contact

Before, there was no contact page which made finding help almost impossible. To improve this problem, we gathered all the contact information and created a page with organized contact information in a simple form.

Conclusion

The redesign propose was to create a more organized, less information, and more action approach. This update provides users with necessary information and the ability to register for courses quickly. The update also provides the ability for users to get more information quickly without confusing the user. The new website will help sell the fact that Emory is the leading organization in research and education. Users now have the functionality they have been waiting for and can sell the courses to their employers.

A clean, almost subdued visual design puts content first and successfully enhances the new brand identity to adhere to Emory's standards. In addition, the new user interphase structure provides an improved user experience and provides users the ability to register for important courses.

Lessons Learned

The purpose of this redesign was to fix the entire user experience ranging from:  getting the proper information, finding a course, to registering and completing a user profile. I also had to rebrand the site to be more up-to-date with the new university brand that was being introduced.

In the end, this was a challenge. I concluded that the organization of the old structure was pretty difficult considering how unorganized it was.

I did lack the amount of user research I would have liked to get; however, we did get some valuable feedback through three different focus groups.

Overall, I am happy with how the user interphase turned out and that we provided an experience the users will be happy with.