Process Highlights

The information architecture evolved from a card sorting exercise conducted with the project managers. The current navigation groups information by student goals. An example is the Internship Program as a high level item rather than a link buried within a page.

Design Highlights

Internal links group on the left. External links group on the right. The center of the screen is retained for text-heavy pages. The visual design, although appealing, is minimal in order to draw attention to the content, not images on the page.

Process Highlights

As a usability consultant on this project, I started by interviewing all relevant stakeholders either in person or over the phone: two Kindergarten teachers, a reading coach, an application trainer and two customer service reps. After the interviews, I arranged an affinity diagramming session with the project lead, the developer and the customer service reps. We identified the most pressing issues that had to be addressed in the redesign.

The conceptual design was tested with a group of current system users and the insights from testing informed a final redesign before QA testing.

Design Highlights

The tabs on the new interface take advantage of "paper and folder" metaphors that teachers carry from their daily activities to the web.

Interaction with the system happens in 4 month intervals, so complex processes were moved to wizards, eliminating the need to remember or relearn the steps.

Design Highlights

Portfolios should highlight an individual's activities and achievements. The web page should enhance these. The portfolio viewer often has limited time to look through the pages, so navigation simplicity is critical.

This design balances large images with text in a format that enables quick scrolling. A viewer can glance quickly through everything or spend time on one item. The most important items appear on the first page so a viewer need not click in order to find content.