Columbia School of General Studies
We improved usability and design for Columbia School of General Studies' Undergraduate and Postbac websites.
The School of General Studies needed a single and easily usable destination to inform, engage and educate all audiences in a way that more fully conveys the identity of the School, for both the undergraduate site and postbaccalaureate site.
The website at the time contained a satisfactory wealth and quality of information, but had an out-of-date aesthetic, was confusing to navigate and was full of broken links and inaccessible content.
“The site has a lot of outdated resources and broken links. It has a lot of silo content. I have to dig.”
Since the School of General Studies website is regularly visited by a large variety of users from all walks of life (prospective students, current students, alumni, staff, faculty and press), it was imperative to significantly update the website's usability and design.
And so we began...
Our approach?
We began by identifying multiple audiences and their needs, designing personas, running a variety of analyses (Google Analytics, heat maps, etc.) and conducting a content audit. In addition, we ran usability testing, interviews and design workshops.
Our findings?
We found that our user feedback aligned with our understanding of the website, namely that the site had an outdated aesthetic, was difficult to navigate and was not accessible. We improved navigation and internal search, more thoughtfully separated and presented different types of content and removed or updated broken links and duplicate information.
