Working for a Client
Our client for our project was Dan Perry. We worked as a group to design a new Surveying and Mapping website for UVU. There was an interesting dynamic in this class because we were working against other groups, trying to create a design that Dan and our professor liked, and make something that benefited and worked for our target audience.
To make this new design happen we had a lot of work to do. We did an interview with our stakeholder to gather some information. The biggest problems were that the program didn’t have enough exposure, there wasn’t enough students in the major and the site needed work visually and on the functionality. We needed to decide on what information was important and necessary to have on the site, the best way to display the information and keep things intriguing and aesthetically pleasing. We also needed to find images that would attract the users and interest them in the program.
We wanted the images on the site to show real UVU students working as well as show the fun events and activities occurring and going on in this program. We wanted those to replace the current Google images. We weren’t able to get those images for our designs but we did think this would be a great addition to the site.
We created a survey to collect data regarding our users, their knowledge about Surveying and Mapping and get their thoughts on the current site. We also did some interviews to gather information directed at our target users which was students that were undecided on their major. A benefit to doing the surveys and interviews, other than gathering information and data, is it gave us credibility with our design choices when presenting our ideas to our stakeholder.
Survey Questions:
- How interested/happy are you with your (or your child’s) current major?
- How interested are you (or your child) in technology involving drones and 3D mapping?
- When going to the Surveying and Mapping site, what are the main things you’re looking for?
- Do you belong to, or would you join (or recommend that your child join) clubs or meetups related to their major?
- Did going to the site make you more interested in choosing Surveying and Mapping as a major? If so, how likely are you to switch your major to Surveying and Mapping?
- What factors would make you consider enrolling in the Surveying and Mapping program at UVU?
- How helpful would it be to have contact information on the site to ask questions about the major?
- How do you feel about the current UVU Surveying and Mapping site?
- What are some things you like or don’t like about the site?
- Would you be willing to participate in an in-person interview or focus group?
Interview Questions:
- How much do your parents influence your choice of major? How involved are they (do they pay for
tuition, etc.)? - How much money are you wanting to earn after you graduate?
- What kind of lifestyle are you hoping for?
- What would make you interested in a major? What things do you look for when picking a major (ex. working alone, drones, being outside)?
- Are you more drawn to job satisfaction or salary?
- What kind of work culture are you in search of or interested in?
Interview Results:
To begin the design creation process, we created wireframes. We created both mobile and desktop versions. Once we completed our wireframes we were able to show our design to our stakeholder without the distraction of color, images and videos.
On our styleguide we put some UVU guidelines that we followed and other information like icons and text size.
We did some Eye-Tracking testing to see what information people can gather from the site, where they spend a lot of time looking, and collect their input on our design.
Eye-Tracking Questions:
Task 1: Show them the home page and prompt them to familiarize themselves with the home page and what the website is for.
- Describe what the home page is for.
- Describe what Surveying and Mapping is.
- How appealing and intriguing was the home page?
Task 2: Show them the home page again and prompt them to find and familiarize themselves wit the Degrees page.
- How helpful were the question mark icons on the Degrees page?
- How helpful do you feel the Degrees page is in answering any questions you may have about a degree?
Eye-Tracking Findings:
- Remove text from the site
- Include additional pictures
- Clearer description of what Surveying and Mapping is
- Prototyping the drop down boxes to get a more accurate opinion from our users about the display of the information
Working for a real stakeholder and client was a great experience. It was good to research, design, test, present and make needed changes and updates. Being able to do research and gather information from our surveys, interviews and tests and then share the data with our stakeholder was scary but good. The hard thing was our stakeholder was not completely sold on our data because I think he thought we were bias and our sample size wasn’t super big. His concerns were valid and understandable, but it was good practice for me.
