Art School Project
2024
When I started looking for a new project I wanted to do something different then what I had done before and I wanted to bring something more bland to life. I stumbled upon a university page that looked outdated and needed a new lease on life. The website was for a University's graduate arts program that has all the things that you would expect like information about the school and a link to apply. It also had a community bulletin board and a news and events section so there's spots for users to stay up to date on current events at the school. I took this was the perfect opportunity to take a website whose main goal is to be informative and redesign it to make it more exciting.
​
The initial challenge was the absence of real-world users for user testing. Given that most of my peers had completed their studies, it was challenging to find current university students to provide relevant insights. To address this, I began by identifying and categorizing the primary user groups of the university website. These categories included current students, their friends and family, prospective students, their friends and family, and other stakeholders such as faculty, staff, and alumni. This segmentation allowed me to better understand their goals and motivations, which guided the restructuring of the website to align with their needs. I used this analysis to reorganize the content and navigation, ensuring a more intuitive user experience.​
​After learning what's important to users and what their root cause motivations were for coming to the site to begin with I then did a competitive analysis. I was looking for things like what the competitors websites looked like visually, were they following good UX practices, what information do they have and not have compared to the site I'm working on? I learned the other universities that I was comparing to did use more imagery and color to try and make their websites more exciting looking - but most of the time it came at the cost of good UX practices. There'd be things like white text over yellow backgrounds. Even the competitors that had better websites visually and followed good UX practices would have organizational issues or important aspects like the apply now button hidden amongst other menu items like SAIC.
Harvard Comp Analysis
Reason for comparison is Harvard is an ivy league level univeristy with a dedicated Art School as well as a dedicated web page for their art program.
Summary:
The multiple fonts and sizes along with the multiple points where color contrast is below WCAG compliance levels shows there seems to be no style guide, design system in place, or particular theme that the website is going for. Even if Harvard isn’t worried about WCAG for legal reasons, a university striving for inclusiveness should be excepted. The screenshots above also don’t show how the calendar container on the left side of the screen is useless. None of the dates are clickable, changing between months doesn’t change anything, add any information below, or show any indication that there are any events planned for the foreseeable future.
The 4 screenshots above show 3 different fonts used in the website that come in 4 different sizes, with various color contrast values.
The next big hurdle I faced came while I was doing research for the project. I had started thinking about the design I wanted to do so was researching things like color palettes, assets, and imagery that I could use for my design. While doing that research I found a policy from the website I was looking at that states that no outside users may use their name, logo, or any trademarks for any use unless given permission. This turned this project from something very specific into something that needed to be a bit more open ended. Luckily I wasn't too far into the design phase of the project and had only started the wireframe. But it added a wrinkle to the project that I had not initially anticipated when I started.
​
Finally after understanding user needs, industry standards, and overcoming the hurdles and limitations I've faced during the project I was able to finish my final design. The design focused on good UX practices, with things like readability and a better user flow being the main focus while using sculptures and mosaics as design elements to give the feel of an art school that takes a modern approach. I also regrouped the different tabs and buttons at the top of the page to be closer together depending on the user coming to the website. Current students and faculty will find the buttons they need at the top of the page, where prospective students and new users will use the buttons on the left side. ​​
​With the final design in place, user testing was done to ensure the goals I initially set out to achieve were completed. I wanted to bring new life to a project in a different field from what I've worked on previously. I utilized A/B testing to test both if visually the new design has improved, and if the flow of the website had improved. For visuals, I started by showing each homepage for about 3-5 seconds and asking users questions about each website. Then asking questions like "What is each website for? What did you see on each that lead you to that answer? Which website do you think you would you rather use and why?". The responses I got to the "why" portions of the questions is what really ensured that my I had accomplished my goal. 1 user had answered that they only knew the original website was for a university after seeing mine and making an assumption. They had only seen each website for a few seconds, but my design got the point across while the other overwhelmed him for those first few seconds.
​
The main thing I learned from this project was to embrace the hurdles you face while designing. What I initially thought was going to be a simple redesign turned into something a little different at each step. Reading through the universities policies and learning I couldn't use any of their assets came at a cost, but did allow for a more creative and flexible design. When wanting to use the theme of combining old art with a modern twist I had to learn different design programs and how to utilize AI even more. So I'm excited to have completed this project and really learn how hurdles in design can be a good thing. They cause you to stop, reevaluate, redesign, and ultimately grow as a designer and elevate your designs.