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Redesigning the ISSIP Digital Experience

Situation

Context:

  • A sponsored Capstone Project via UC Santa Cruz's HCI M.S. program

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Problem:

  • How to redesign ISSIP's website in a more user friendly way for potential, new, and existing members?

 

Duration:

  • 20 weeks (2 quarters)

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Team (2):

  • Derusha Baskaran (me)

  • Dylan Hardman

Task

Goals:

  • Understand why & how members use the ISSIP site

  • Asses usability of current site

    • Do the needs of the members & organization get across clearly?

    • How can we improve the site to help bring in new members?

 

My Roles:

  • UX Researcher

  • UX Designer

  • Project Manager

  • Sponsor Liaison

Action

Research:

  • Literature Review

  • Competitive Analysis

  • (26) Semi-structured Interviews

  • Cognitive Walkthroughs

  • Information Architecture

  • Affinity Mapping

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Design:

  • Ideation

  • Wireframes

  • Mockups

  • Prototyping (Low, mid, high fidelity)

  • Cognitive Walkthroughs

  • Heuristic Analysis

  • Information Architecture

Result

Final Outcome:

  • A focused redesigned on the home, user profile, events pages by making them sleek, efficient, inclusive, & user friendly 

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Future Work:

  • Applying research & design approach to other site pages (i.e. "Resources")

  • Use different methods & techniques (i.e. participatory design & eye tracking)

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Lessons Learned:

  • Time management , organization, & communication is crucial

  • Research & design is an iterative process

Let's Do a Deep Dive into the Project

Sizzle Reel

Watch this quick, informative trailer for our Capstone Project: Redesigning the ISSIP Digital Experience to get a brief overview of what to expect from the following sections below.

Project Background

Who's ISSIP?

A non-profit organization focusing on service innovation, with members from across industry and academia.

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What's Service Innovation?

A collaborative process that creates serviceable value (i.e. platforms, resources, products, etc.) for users while bringing revenue for organizations

ISSIP logo.JPG

Project Goals

  1. Understand how and what for are current ISSIP members using the site?

  2. Asses the general state of the current site

    1. Do the members' and ISSIP's needs/wants get across clearly?

    2. How can we improve the site to bring in new members?

Research Process

Research Objectives

  • In order to best redesign ISSIP's site, we had to:

    • Understand ISSIP members' digital experience to better optimize the site

    • Learn why/how newcomers engage in professional organizations and their sites

Research Methods

  • Collecting Data

    • Semi-structured interviews

    • Cognitive Walkthroughs

  • Analyzing Data:

    • Information Architecture

    • Affinity Mapping

Meeting

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Research Findings

After conducting research, we discovered results that can be categorized into the following three themes:

 

  • Community engagement

    • Participants were willing and eager to share their knowledge and learn from others

  • Resource Accessibility

    • Participants wanted to easily find, share, and contribute to resources on the platform with internal and external communities

  • Digital Platform Experience

    • Participants appreciate an efficient digital journey with less distracting visuals and unreliable access to important information

Design Recommendations

Based on our research findings, we reflected and created design recommendations that can be categorized into the same following three themes:

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  • Community engagement

    • Create a digital space on the site to enable the community to engage with one another

  • Resource Accessibility

    • Including easy access to resources like a digital library, video playlists, and announcements of upcoming events

  • Digital Platform Experience

    • Create an overall user-friendly digital experience that allows for less friction and distractions while on the site

Design Process

Participant Background

For the research phase of this project, here is some context on our participant background.

  • Total Number of Participants: 13

  • Key points to note:

    • Some participants overlap in user categories

    • Range of participant backgrounds across academia & industry

    • Project sponsor wanted us to include new members

    • Limited to 4 user groups due to time

Participant Background_research phase.png

Design Objectives

  • In order to best redesign ISSIP's site, we had to brainstorm and create design iterations for how to best achieve the needs/wants of both members & ISSIP for:

    • Community Engagement

    • Resource Accessibility

    • Digital Platform Experience

  • Conduct usability testing with stakeholders on our designs

  • Design for inclusivity & accessibility

Design Methods & Techniques

  • Brainstorming:

    • Competitive Analysis

    • Design Ideation

    • Sketching

  • Designing:

    • Wireframes

    • Mockups

    • Prototyping

  • Design Research: (with our designs)

    • A/B testing

    • Cognitive Walkthrough

    • Heuristic Analysis

    • Information Architecture

Researching and Writing

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Design Ideation

  • Based on our research findings, we sketched ~40 potential design ideas to brainstorm how to best achieve the needs/wants of both members & ISSIP

  • To best keep in line with our grad school & project timeline, we communicated and collaborated with our sponsors to narrow down our project design scope to these 3 pages that aligned with our research findings which focused on Community Engagement, Resource Accessibility, & overall Digital Platform Experience:

    • Home Page

    • Events Page

    • User Profile Page

Current ISSIP Site Design Evaluation

  • Before testing our redesigns with participants, we first interviewed them about what they thought of the functionality and aesthetics of the current ISSIP site for the 3 pages we're focusing on (Homepage, Events Page, User Profile Page).

  • Check out some responses and screenshots for each page in the slideshow on the left.

Context for Design Research Methods

  • Cognitive Walkthrough

    • To understand how users would navigate through our design ideas

  • Heuristic Analysis

    • Consulted a UX Designer with 5+ years of experience on current ISSIP site designs as well as our design mockups to gain more feedback

  • Information Architecture

    • To figure out problem areas with the flow of the current ISSIP site and how we can restructure it better with our designs
       

Design Research Disclaimer

  • The Events Page was our first deliverable as it needed the most work and that's why it was more frequently used for our usability testing sessions

  • Later on, our sponsors also mentioned they'd like a larger revamp of ISSIP's home page and user profile page

    • They were already functional, but just needed a more user friendly and modern design

  • Although we had less time to run specific usability testing sessions for the home page and user profile page, we were still able to gather valuable data on all pages together when conducting usability testing sessions with our iterative designs and prototype
     

Check out some key findings from our usability testing sessions below
(Click the image to enlargen)

Design Style Guide

  • Here's an overview of the various design elements used in the final redesign.

  • It includes various elements regarding the UI for the site redesign from typography, colors, and icons that encapsulate the simplistic yet clean and modern style we were going for to better enhance the ISSIP digital experience.

Accessibility & Inclusivity Design

  • Based on the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG), we referenced and incorporated elements that would ensure our final product would be accessible and inclusive for an array of users.

  • By following Guideline 1.4, the use of a few, specific colors helps with contrast on a site to make it more visually accessible.

  • By following Guideline 2.4, the use of headings, subtitles, and labels to describe sections on a site make it more cognitively accessible.

Final Designs

The following section provides an overview of the final designs and some key highlights.

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Feel free to take a close look at some of the final designs or scroll down for a brief breakdown of specific parts of the redesign.

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If you have any questions or would like to learn more about the final version, please don't hesitate to reach out and connect with me via LinkedIn

Enjoy the final outcome of this project below
(Click on any image to magnify specific parts)

Home Page

The landing page for ISSIP's site which gives people a brief idea of what ISSIP is all about.

What's New?

1) Navigation Menu

  • Applied Hick's Law to reduce the number of tabs (from 8 down to 6) and make them concise for easier and more efficient navigation across the whole site

  • Compare to ISSIP's current site navigation menu below:

2) Recent News & Upcoming Events Sections

  • Feature recent news and upcoming events so people can immediately know what is currently going on at ISSIP

3) Member Spotlight

  • Recognize and celebrate ISSIP members for their work and service to the organization and larger community

Profile Page

A space for members to personalize their ISSIP experience.

What's New?

1) Awards/Recognitions

  • Users can showcase their ISSIP awards/recognitions

  • Users can choose whether or not they would like to showcase all or a few of their ISSIP awards/recognitions for others to see when viewing their profile page

2) My Upcoming Events Section

  • Users can see and be reminded of which ISSIP events they have signed up for and are coming up

3) My Published Work Section

  • Users can choose to showcase their published work for to others to view

Events Page

A revamped way to explore the various events ISSIP has to offer.

What's New?

1) Flexible View Switcher

  • Users can collapse the events calendar to view a larger events list if they'd prefer a more traditional and less cluttered digital experience

(Public View of Profile Page)

(Personal View of Profile Page)

Challenges/Limitations

  • Recruitment process

    • Time zone differences with users

    • Long delays in responses

  • Managing workload

    • Balancing grad school and applying for jobs

  • Organizational constraints

    • money

    • small group of volunteers

  • Burnout

  • Time
     

Future Work

What to do differently?

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  • Use other research methods

    • i.e. participatory design, user diaries, focus groups, etc.

  • Apply our research process to the other pages across the ISSIP site

    • i.e. "Resources" page

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Lessons Learned

  • Research and design is an iterative process

  • Keep an open mind and be open to feedback

  • Time management and organization is crucial to accomplishing deliverables

  • Team work makes the dream work

Like what you see? Let's chat.

Derusha Baskaran | 2025

  • LinkedIn
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