UX Researcher & IA Designer • 21 participants • Evidence-led IA redesign

Redesigning an Institutional Website for Prospective and Current Students

A research-led UX project addressing information architecture breakdowns in a university department website, balancing institutional constraints with student decision-making needs through iterative usability testing and structural redesign.

Information Architecture Usability Testing Thematic Synthesis Institutional Constraints B2B2C Systems

Overview

A quick snapshot of what this was, what you owned, and the system constraints that shaped the work.

Your Role

UX Research design
User observation + task-based testing
Thematic synthesis of usability issues
Information architecture restructuring
Iterative prototyping and validation
Research reporting and recommendations

Note: Team-based project; contribution focused on research, analysis, and structural design decisions.

Context

Type: Applied UX research & redesign
Domain: Higher education / institutional platforms
Users: Prospective (non-UTM), first-year, upper-year students
System: B2B2C (Institution / Dept / IT → students)

Stakeholder Lenses

This website serves multiple audiences inside an institutional system. Toggle perspectives to see how intent, constraints, and success metrics shift.

Prospective students (non-UTM)

Need decision-critical info fast (program fit, requirements, outcomes)
Expect clear differentiation between programs
Get overloaded by institutional structure and jargon
Interpret navigation confusion as “I’m not meant to find this”

Current students (first-year → upper-year)

Task-focused (deadlines, forms, advising, course planning)
Repeatedly hit missing info, duplication, and dead-ends
Build workarounds (Google, peers) instead of using the site
Confusion increases at high-stakes moments (program selection)

Department (content owners)

Multiple internal audiences and competing content priorities
Often organizes pages by institutional structure, not user intent
Relies on “completeness” instead of clarity and prioritization
Success often measured by coverage, not task success

IT / Administration

Constrained by CMS templates, branding rules, and governance
Implementation is slow; changes require approvals and coordination
Prefers stable structures and low-maintenance content models
Needs actionable recommendations that fit real constraints

UX researcher / IA designer

Frames “navigation confusion” as an IA failure, not user failure
Uses task evidence to justify structural decisions
Focuses on clarity under constraints (not a visual overhaul)
Optimizes for decision-making and repeatable maintenance

Problem & Research Focus

The website served multiple audiences, but prioritized institutional structure over user intent — especially hurting high-stakes student decisions.

Core problem: The department website contained the right information, but made it hard to find, compare, and trust — due to fragmented navigation (multiple menus), missing or inaccessible decision-critical content, unclear program differentiation, and overload for first-time visitors.

See how it was studied

Constraints

These constraints shaped what could be recommended — focusing the project on structure and clarity rather than a visual overhaul.

Institutional constraints

Branding standards and content ownership
Governance and approval pathways
CMS/template limitations

Legacy complexity

Duplicated and outdated pages
Inconsistent labels across sections
Navigation sprawl from incremental additions

Delivery limits

No direct control over final implementation
Academic timeline and scope limits
Needed actionable handoff to IT

Approach & Method

The project used task evidence and thematic synthesis to justify structural (IA) decisions, then validated improvements through iterations.

Method Summary

Task-based usability testing with 21 participants
Participants included first-year and upper-year students
Direct observation + interview-based probing
Identification of recurring failures: missing info, poor prioritization, navigation confusion
Thematic synthesis into problem → requirement mapping
Iterative low- and mid-fidelity wireframing
Follow-up usability testing across multiple rounds

Method Flow

Define task reality Clarify what students actually try to do (and what “success” looks like) vs institutional structure.

Test & observe breakdowns Run task-based sessions, probe confusion points, and capture where information becomes inaccessible.

Synthesize themes Group recurring failures into an IA diagnosis: competing menus, missing decision-critical info, unclear labels.

Iterate wireframes & re-test Propose structural solutions (nav, labeling, comparison) and validate through iterative testing rounds.

Placeholder: usability testing artifacts

Placeholder: Task-based testing materials and session artifacts (click to preview)

Placeholder: wireframes and IA structure

Placeholder: Low/mid-fidelity wireframes and proposed IA (click to preview)

Key Decisions

Design decisions that were driven by observed failures and validated through iterative testing — not aesthetic preference.

Prioritized prospective and first-year students over internal users because their tasks were higher-stakes and repeatedly failing in testing.

Proposed a single, horizontal navigation to remove confusion caused by three competing navigation systems.

Removed culturally specific or ambiguous icons in favor of explicit text labels — improving clarity for non-UTM and first-time visitors.

Recommended eliminating carousels and image clusters that duplicated information and increased scanning cost without improving task success.

Added a program comparison concept after observing users explicitly seeking side-by-side differentiation during decision-making tasks.

Deliverables & Outputs

Artifacts that matter in institutional settings: evidence, mappings, wireframes, and implementable recommendations.

Usability Research Report

Findings from task-based testing: observations, recurring breakdowns, and evidence-backed recommendations.

Problem → Requirement Mapping

A structured mapping connecting observed failures to actionable IA requirements and content priorities.

Wireframes + Recommendations

Low- and mid-fidelity wireframes plus a recommendation set designed for IT handoff under governance constraints.

Project file: Final CCT380 (1)

Outcomes & Impact

The results showed that information architecture — not content volume or visual design — was the dominant failure in this institutional context.

What the study found

100% identified information architecture as the primary failure
81% found content not easily accessible
76% encountered missing decision-critical information
Users experienced navigation confusion and increased task completion time

So what?

The redesign improved clarity by reducing competing navigation, strengthening labels, and aligning structure with user intent.

Reduced navigation confusion across iterations
Improved path clarity for high-stakes tasks (program decision-making)
Converted user requests (e.g., comparison) into design requirements

Core insight: Institutional clarity — not more content — was the missing ingredient for student decision-making support.

Learnings & Reflection

What this reinforced about institutional UX, high-stakes decision contexts, and designing under external implementation authority.

What changed in your thinking

Institutional sites often optimize for internal structure, not user intent
Information architecture failures outweigh visual design issues in high-stakes decisions
Prospective users require explicit signaling and prioritization, not discovery

How UX research helped

Evidence-led testing made IA decisions defensible — and kept recommendations implementable even when final authority sat with institutional stakeholders.

IA-first thinking Task evidence Institutional constraints Actionable handoff