The Dental Center ran 12 disparate sites with no clear audience, organization or conversion point. They asked us to redesign their online presence into one site that would compete with private dental providers.
Qualitative research pointed to the technical, marketing and service design problems standing in the way of a site that would appeal to privately-insured patients.
Research unveiled five user types. We prioritized "Paul," the privately-insured campus employee and "Ina," the privately-insured campus neighborhood resident.
Google Analytics showed that site users of the old site struggled to find the specialty clinic they needed—among other problems.
The customer journey told us what service design problems we could alleviate or solve by redesigning the site.
We created hundreds of user stories and ranked them with our client to prioritize new site functions and build its information architecture.
A review of competitor sites revealed opportunities to differentiate the Dental Center through strategic messaging, voice, art direction and interactive features.
The site map drew upon our research into user needs and the Center's business objectives.
Labeling content throughout the site enabled pieces to surface in appropriate places.
We created a positioning statement that would guide not just the site content, but all of the Center's marketing efforts.
Several collaborative sketching sessions with our client posed questions, revealed assumptions and set the course for visual and interactive design.
Our moodboards informed rules that would govern how the new site would display type, photography, color and other visuals.
We collaborated on wireframes using InVision.
The final site differentiates the Dental Center with UCSF's "#1 in research" pedigree through messaging, voice, and visual design. These changes help put the Dental Center in the running against private clinics. The new architecture fast-tracks a potential patient into identifying the right clinic and making an appointment. The site just went up—metrics to come.
EECS hadn’t updated its site since 2006. They needed a new one that would entice a diverse pool of top applicants, organize resources for internal audiences, and reflect the department’s diversity, rigor and prestige.
It wasn't pretty.
Not surprisingly, interviews and surveys revealed that of all attributes, users found the old site's look and organization most in need of improvement.
Examining the old site revealed outdated and redundant content and pointed to new content and organizational needs.
Organic search results were high. Paired with interview insights, these numbers validated the "disorganization" narrative; visitors searched Google to find content instead of browsing the site.
User and client stakeholder research helped us prioritize the graduate program candidate, "Petra," who was looking for information on research. She was also a product of the department's aspiration to recruit more women and ethnic minorities.
Content mapping showed us that this was primarily an information re-architecture project. The original site held thousands of pages that had to be omitted, repositioned or merged into other pages.
We used Optimal Sort service to understand how our nomenclature and organizational schemes were working—or not working.
We created a content tagging system so that the new site would surface content in appropriate places.
Collaborative sketching sessions with our client posed questions, revealed assumptions and set the course for visual and interactive design.
Our moodboards established the site's look and feel, as well as how it would display type, photography, color and other visuals.
EECS now boasts a site worthy of its legacy. With redundant content gone and new content made more efficient, users can now find information faster, on more devices, and get a more accurate impression of the department.
