UM-Dearborn Research Core Pages
Overview
As part of the strategic planning process of the university, the research core pages were created to elevate the presence of research on the campus' central website. The goal of this project was to attract research talent and partnerships to UM-Dearborn. This would be accomplished by showcasing research currently being done on campus, identifying key research strengths at UM-Dearborn, and highlighting resources and programs available to faculty and student researchers.
Problem statement: How can we showcase the great research happening at UM-Dearborn to attract prospective faculty and graduate students?
Role
UX Researcher/Architect
Methods/Deliverables
Hybrid Card Sort, Study Report, Wireframes, High-fidelity Mockups
Role / Activities
I was responsible for user research, information architecture, project management and visual mockups. I developed project and testing plans, content wireframes and mockups based on our Drupal CMS components. I worked closely with the writer and project stakeholders to plan for content.
Hybrid Card Sort
The similarity matrix shows the proportion of participants who grouped any two cards in the same category. For each pair of cards, the intersecting cell shows the percentage of participants who grouped these cards together. The most closely related pairings are clustered along the right edge of the table.
Project Details / Process
The primary audiences are potential research partners and prospective faculty. I collaborated with a writer from Marketing & Communications and the Office of Research team to develop core pages showcasing research at UM-Dearborn. We leveraged existing news content to highlight key research stories and initiatives. As part of this project I wrote a test plan and conducted a card sort with active research faculty to help determine appropriate categories and organization of the resources provided for researchers. We took advantage of the new hero banner and large numeric callout components as part of our upgrade to Drupal 9.
Results
Three months after these pages went live, the new Research section had received over 3,000 unique visits, with users averaging 42 seconds on each page and over 70% staying on the website and taking another action. Users are reading these pages and engaging with other parts of the site when they visit.