Redesign the NYU Office of Global Services website which provides important immigration inforamtion for International Scholars who are recruited from all over the world. The website was last updated in 2013.

My Role: UX, User Research & Testing, Project Management
Team: Melissa Zuroff, Associate Director of Communications and Outreach; Maria Fang, UX Designer & Researcher; Poppy Zhang, Data Analyst; Sehwan Park, Visual Designer.

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES

Google Analytics data from the past year showed that the website was rarely used. Before diving into research, we brainstormed with stakeholders to set expectations for the redesign.

“ What do we expect to get out of this redesign? “

QUALTRICS SURVEYS

We sent out surveys through Qualtrics to see how users think about the website currently, and what information they expect to find. The survey results matched our Google Analytics results from the past year: people rarely visited the site, and if they did, they had difficulty finding answers. Users would instead reach out to department liaison or fellow scholars to seek out information.

USER RESEARCH

- Interview users
- Card sorting

I interviewed users that I recruited through the surveys to understand their current workflow. And to identify painpoints that could be solved through this redesign.

“ What are the problems you run into a lot in your (department liaisons) current workflow? ”

“ What are the information the users(international scholars) ask for the most? “

PERSONAS

I provided personas as a reminder of the important user insights.

“Who are the target users?”

After a few rounds of interviews and discussions, we determined that the scholars actually don’t use the website too often, because the department liaisons usually handle everything. The department liaisons exchange emails extensively with the advisors for information.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Based on the research and card sorting results, we know there are two primary goals for the site:

1. To find immigration-related information

2. Scholars looking for life-related Information at NYU/NYC

FINAL DEVELOPMENT

The NYU CMS is managed by the NYU web team, where they provid guidelines to promote visual consistency within the NYU brand. We used the guidelines creatively to serve the purpose for our site.

Layout Design
I worked closely with the web team to deliver a design based on the hierarchy of need and consistent with our design handbook.

Content Strategy : Jargon-free
The last two weeks involved extensive copy-editing in order to deliver easy to understand content, since the majority of international scholars don’t speak English as their first language.

Website was launched in October 2016: NYU International Scholars Immigration Services