Savannah State University
SSU, the oldest public Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in Georgia, needed a new website that better represented their history and culture, while still retaining the key content their various audiences of students, faculty, and staff members needed.
My Role
UX Research (Support)
For this project, I supported our Director of UX & Content Strategy in reviewing content on the current site and conducting competitive analysis on similar higher ed websites. I also reviewed analytics to understand which pages of the current website were being regularly accessed, and which weren’t.
UX & Content Strategy (Lead)
In my role as a Strategist on this project, I mapped every page of the website in order to create a new site map, and led the creation of high-fidelity wireframes. I worked with in-house and external developers to ensure the intention of the designs were met, and led QA from a strategy perspective during development.
The Problem
Role at this phase: Researcher, support
Skills: Interview synthesis, competitive analysis, website audit, content mapping
Prior to redesign, the SSU website was scattered, disorganized, and unappealing to its users. Content was not organized in a way that made sense for users, so pages with key information were difficult to find. In addition, they needed a new brand to reintroduce themselves and become more competitive in the higher education space. Taking research from interviews with key stakeholders and students, I began to understand the needs of both audience groups, and used this information as I reviewed analytics and competitor websites. I then synthesized this information and created a content map to help understand key pages, the important information on those pages, as well as pages that weren’t being used on the current site. I organized all new components into documentation that supported both design and development teams.
Content mapping allowed the UX team to see each page of the website, the key content on those pages, and its analytics rate.
I led the creation of content organizing based on the needs of the current site, UX, brand strategy, and copy.
The Process
Role at this phase: Strategist
Skills: Sitemap, wireframes
Building on the research, I worked with the Director of UX & Content Strategy to create a new sitemap that better organized pages based on what users were accessing on the old website. Following a full content audit of the current website, I led the creation of wireframes that captured all of the content needs of the current site, in a new, user-friendly way. I worked with the brand strategy and copy team to ensure content needs were also met from a brand perspective.
A portion of the new sitemap, built based on research conducted during the discovery phase.
The new website organized content in a clear, inviting manner, while still ensuring students and faculty could easily access key information and user actions.
The new website needed to take into account copy and brand strategy for a complete design overhaul.
Working collaboratively with a designer, the new website came to life based on the wireframes.
I also worked closely with the development team to ensure accurate functionality of all components.
The Outcome
Role at this phase: Strategist
Skills: QA, content documentation
The SSU site has recently wrapped front end development and is being moved to an external developer for back end. During the front end development process, I led the QA effort from the strategy perspective, testing functionality on several browsers. I worked collaboratively with a designer to create content documentation that will support SSU’s ability to understand the components available to them and future-proofs their ability to continue to add new content to the site as necessary.
This project was supported by:
Creative Director, overseeing design
Brand Director, overseeing brand
UX & Content Director, leading UX Research and overseeing UX & Content Strategy
Copywriter
Designer
Two Front End Developers
External Back End Developers
External Project Manager