University at Buffalo Pilot Web Project
Websites | www.buffalo.edu
2011-2012
Role:
Information architecture, UX/UI Design, Usability Research and Testing (Team Lead)
The university used this design as a best practice example for other offices and departments.
The Process
To understand UB’s broad range of users, our team conducted extensive user research. We used Indi Young’s Mental Models and her ethnographic research methodology. We worked with Indi to define the University’s primary task-based audience segments. We also partnered with the consulting firm mStoner to do user interviews. We identified the key audiences’ common needs and categorized them into meaningful clusters. The website’s architecture, user interface design and content development were driven by this research. We made sure the end product was user-centered with repeated usability tests.
(above) An excerpt from the “Matchseeker mental model. The top half groups user tasks by common goals and themes. The bottom half represents our content gap analysis, which helped us understand where our existing content addressed specific user needs and what new content needed to be created.
Made Sustainable
The goal for this project is sustainability and scalability. So we design the site as a building block and component that can be reused.


Recognition
UB’s homepage redesign won the 2012 Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Circle of Excellence Award for Best Complete Institutional Website.
The University at Buffalo won the top award this year for an impressive, comprehensive rethinking and redesign of its top-level website using ethnographic research on mental models pioneered by Indi Young. The site’s content, architecture, and research-based approach are absolutely award-worthy … Buffalo.edu illustrated that clear process, experimentation, iteration, strategy, and hard work yields results—and top honors.
—Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Circle of Excellence Awards 2012 Judges’ Report | Read the full report (PDF)