Schoolbag
web redesign ideation
UX | GRAPHIC DESIGN | RESEARCH |WEB
Overview
The Ministry of Education (MOE) wanted to redesign their Schoolbag website - a news site that publishes content about the latest education policies, school-related features, as well as education-related tips and resources. This is sparked after an initial marketing review by an external agency on Schoolbag's website and the high bounce rate.
Social media posts and ads across various digital platforms.
Understanding the Problem
Run a preliminary diagnosis by going through the website for the first time based on insights provided by agency and noted down observations as I use the site (it's my first time hearing about Schoolbag when I joined MOE).
Here are some of my observations:
- Site is not responsive; elements are hard-coded
- No affinity between user and Schoolbag; no opportunities to create a community either
- Confusing content categories
- No clear strategy to gather leads
- Social channels relating to the site are all under MOE (the ministry is seen as regulatory)
- Search page is not consistent with the site
- Too many lines used in the design; busy
I ran a competitor analysis to compare Schoolbag with other (local) sites that publishes education-related news. I also sought to understand how the internal stakeholders find Schoolbag. Hence, I interviewed them to learn more about their frustrations and limitations. For example, the content team shared with me how uploading images is a pain with the current Content Management System (CMS).
I also ran an Information Architecture (IA) audit using DSIA’s Boolean IA maturity assessment to check the state of readiness of the IA in terms of functionality and quantity of information within the domain.
From the assessments, I hypothesise that the lack of informational relationship could be the cause of why users are not staying within the site as they don’t deem it as relevant towards their needs. Even though the content produced benefits the user, but its not apparent in the content packaging. Navigation is easy within the site, however, there are certain pathways which takes you out of the site: eg. Videos and forms that might not incentivise the users to head back to the Schoolbag site.
Surveys
In order to find out the reason for the high bounce rate, we sent out an online survey across various MOE channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, EDM, web banner, MOE intranet banner) to better understand our audiences' reading habits and their pain points when using Schoolbag. We also provided an optional email field in the survey for respondents to fill in if they are willing to test out the prototype in the future.
Designed the social media posts for the survey and worked with the writers to craft the copy for the posts. I liaised with other departments to procure items to send out as incentives and designed a thank you note that were delivered to respondents who gave their address.
SPRINT
After analysing the results, a colleague and I facilitated a 2-day SPRINT session with the internal stakeholders to ensure that everyone's aligned. As the SPRINT was done when Singapore had restrictions on group sizes for physical meetings, the session was done on both Zoom and Miro.
The SPRINT was condensed into two days due to conflicting timelines between departments. The first day was spent on goal setting; expert panel — where the different departments share their pain points and expectations; and affinity mapping. After we defined the problem, we proceeded to develop our ideas by sketching out solutions and storyboarding the user journey.
In order to maximise the two days, some exercises were prepared beforehand, such as user personas, user journey, and a portion of the affinity mapping based off the survey (where it will be filled up by the SPRINT participants).
Post-SPRINT
After the SPRINT session, I organised smaller workshops with the different teams in the subsequent weeks to tackle the urgent tasks such as branding with the design team as well as IA and content category with the content team.
To facilitate this, I integrated SMART - a productivity tool mainly used for goal setting- into a Kanban board format for our timeline so that our progress is trackable, clear, and productive. It also allows us to rationalise some of the tasks and justify prioritising one task over the other.
SMART - Specific (the task), Measurable (next steps), Achievable (progression of task completion; setbacks faced if any), Resource (changed from Relevant - what I need and people involved in the task), Time-based (deadline).
Rebranding
Working together with the design team, we discussed on colours and the grid. My role is to advise the design team on colour psychology and contrast. As MOE's brand colour is similar to IKEA's, I suggested using the blue and yellow as accents with a cream background to distance that possible association with IKEA. The cream makes the website more welcoming as it reduces the harshness of white yet retains enough contrast to meet the requirements of WCAG's contrast checker against the font colours. The red used as a third accent is one of the brand colours of the current Schoolbag website.
The dome (and its variations) is inspired by the silhouette of a schoolbag, increasing user association for Schoolbag.
Results and Takeaways
1) I have laid out the next steps such as crafting user interview questions and tasks for user testing before leaving the Ministry. I also laid out recommendations such as card sorting to decide on content category titles that satisfy internal stakeholders while being intuitive for users. This will be useful during the handover process.
2) Sometimes, what you envisioned doesn't translate into reality. During the SPRINT, I noticed that sometimes people don't want to talk unless prompted, and participants are under the impression that you have to be good at drawing during the sketching activity.
How I mitigate this is to constantly provide prompts and examples when the participants seem like they are stuck during the activities. For the sketching exercise, I showed a sample of how you can just do rough shapes with text explainers in order for the rest to understand their ideas.
3) Possibly because it's the ministry, I noticed I am writing a lot of proposals, even for something that seemed banal. However, I realised that creating proposals makes me more aware of how detail-oriented I need to be, and it provides clarity for my superiors to better understand my next steps.