Redesigning of Singapore Management University (SMU) School of Accountancy Website
Understanding the objective and defining the target audience
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The objective of this project was to understand the existing school’s Information Architecture and redesigning it based on the 3 given personas.
From the given personas, I was able to define the general target audience of the school with the following qualities:
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At least 17 years old
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Minimum education of High School / Diploma
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Has the intention to furthering their studies
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Uses device to get information
Understanding the existing website
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The SMU School of Accountancy website is a sub-website of SMU main Website therefore certain information are shared between the 2 sites. The SMU School of Accountancy website does not only serves as a portal for existing students but it also caters to the public and the prospective students to get their relevant information.
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Content Inventory and Auditing
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Going through the entire website and noting down their content accordingly is a tedious process that we inevitably have to go through. The content inventory is definitely a good reference list when it comes to redesigning the website. Knowing where individual piece of information falls within the pages, whether they are up to date, their relevancy and if the links are working fine are considerations to come up with a better design solution.
Heuristic Evaluation & Comparative Analysis
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A Heuristic Evaluation based on Jakob Nielson’s 10 Heuristic was also done for the 4 Universities, SMU School of Accountancy, SUSS, Harvard and RMIT. This allows me to identify the possible areas for improvements within the SMU School of Accountancy website. At this time, a usability test on the existing SMU School of Accountancy was also conducted with a few friends that fits our targeted personas. These tests provided us with more feedback and helped to identify possible problems at the same time.
Card Sorting
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The card sorting was done as a group as we felt that it was important for each individual to observe the users when they are arranging the cards and getting the post feedback from the users with everyone present so we can understand the results better.
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At this time, 4 sets of card were created based on the feedback and problem highlighted. The 4 categories are basically Admissions, Scholarships, Fees, Student Lodging. Before our group head out to get potential participants who fit the persona to do the card sorting, we did a few trial runs within the group and with other classmates to get a rough idea on what are the possible permutations that might show.
Tree Testing
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After we have consolidated our findings from the card sorting exercise, we were able to refine our new Information Architecture (IA) and proceed with our tree testing. We were able to evaluate the findability of the contents within the hierarchy of the information architecture and confirmed that the classifications worked.
Using all the qualitative and quantitative data collected from all the respective test and analysis, I was able to come up with a new site map for the SMU School of Accountancy website.
Developing the design solution
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With the improved site map, I was able to have a clearer picture on how the flow of the website should be. With the following findings and feedback in mind I proceed to do up a low fidelity sketches followed by creating a low fidelity prototype. The link to the prototype is available below:
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