• SELECT PROJECTS
• Special Collections Redesign
• LibGuides Usability
• HCI Project
• Q&AIMS
• Mickkelly's Redesign
• Personas: Facebook
• Word 2003 vs. 2007
• Contextual Inquiry

• OTHER WORK
• Web Design
• Building Rich UX
• Photography
• Environment
• Abstract
• Portraits
• Graphic Design
• Logos

Special Collections Redesign

CHALLENGE

The Special Collections Division of the University of Washington Libraries had not been redesigned or updated in nearly ten years. After an initial usability review, my team and I decided that the best solution was to conduct a content inventory and restructure the information architecture to best accomodate the new and old pages as well as updating the visual design. The previous design can be seen here.

MY ROLE

This project was completed under my position as Usability Engineer at the UW Libraries. I performed the research, designed, and developed the entire redesign with input from my team.

PROCESS

• Research: Literary review, researched previous studies
• Heuristic evaluation of the current site
• Conducted a content inventory
  • Decided this was necessary after the heuristic evaluation. Much content was duplicated and under headings that did not accurately describe the content.
• Created top level navigation and divided content among each new label
• Executed a quick card sort to test the new categories
• Created wireframes for two design ideas
• Received feedback from users about the two designs
• Created visual design elements
• Implemented the new design using hand-coded XHTML and CSS

RESULT

• Consolidated duplicate content
• Broke content into more digestible s chunks
• Created explanations for how to find specific materials
• Streamlined the interaction to show users in succinct step-by-step guidelines on how to find resources