BITLab Redesign

Timeframe: January 2019 - May 2019

Client: Behavior, Information, and Technology Lab at Michigan State University

Project Type: UX Design and Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design, Web Design

Software Used: Adobe XD, Illustrator

Project Overview

During the end of my junior year, I completed an independent study at the Behavior, Information, and Technology Lab (BITLab) at MSU where I conducted an entire UX case study on their main website. I redesigned the interface and presented my final design and UX research findings at a presentation at the end of the semester.

Process

This project was really fun and the professor that I worked with gave me full autonomy to create my own schedule for the semester. So after creating deadlines for myself and conducting my initial stakeholder reviews, I dived into my UX research. For this project I mostly conducted UX interviews. These interviews were with the target audience of the site — professors, BITLab employees, undergrads, graduate students, and PhD candidates, etc. While conducting interviews, I also did an initial audit of the website to understand its functionality.

After gathering information and doing affinity diagramming, I was able to start sketching. Then I went into Adobe XD to do my prototyping. I did 2 iterations of the design, with user testing and interviews in between. When the semester came to a close I finished up my design and got started on the presentation, which was a major part of the independent study, as well as typing an official design report. At the presentation I discussed my findings how they got me to my final design, and walked the audience through my final mockup, followed by a Q&A.

Lessons Learned

  1. Getting feedback is crucial. During this process I held weekly meetings with my stakeholder to make sure I was on the right track with what they needed, and what I could deliver.

  2. Don’t be afraid of presenting! I’m glad this project also gave me experience with presenting my findings, as that is something that I had to do that following summer every two weeks during sprint demos.

Final desigN:

See my final homepage design below, and explore my clickable prototype here!