Improving the usability of the Heriot-Watt University websites
Heriot-Watt University (HWU) in Edinburgh is one of the UK's leading universities for business and industry, with campuses in Edinburgh, the Scottish Borders and Dubai.
The Brief:
We were commissioned by HWU to carry out two pieces of work relating to website planning and usability research on the university website. The first, in 2006, was to work with them to confirm the navigation and information architecture of the main HWU site. The second project, in 2007, focused on the structure of the university's many micro sites.
The Solution:
The university had started the process of developing its new website using its own web development teams. Working with the university's marketing and communications team we undertook a three-stage process involving
- Card sorting to help define the most appropriate information architecture and content structure
- Usability testing of the site in which the performance of the site design was evaluated by observing small groups of users using the site and undertaking particular task and scenarios
- Design services in which we provided the internal Heriot-Watt University team with revised artwork upon which to base the rest of the template page designs
In July 2007 we followed this up with an expert evaluation of some of the university's micro sites. The aim of this project was to provide recommendations for standardising navigation labelling in the many corporate services and individual schools' websites.
This investigation involved the following:
- Creation of personas of users of the Heriot-Watt website
- Outling user journeys to understand what information they would want to find and how easy it was to locate and complete tasks
- Identifying key calls to action on each of these websites
- Re-grouping of information to create a standardised set of navigation labels that could be used across different micro sites, introducing as much consistency across these sites as possible
The Results:
Our findings and recommendations fed in to the internal website development process and the new website was launched in November 2006. Following a further report and presentation to university staff in 2007, HWU is working towards a more standardised and consistent navigation and information architecture for its micro sites. Ultimately this will enhance the user experience for HWU students, helping them to find quickly and easy find the information they need.