nyu.edu/students refresh

In 2022-23, as part of a larger NYU initiative alongside IDEO to improve the overall student experience, The NYU Digital Communications team alongside Student Affairs teamed up to refresh the Students landing page.

As a Web Content Producer, I was a key team member throughout the refresh process. I shared Google Analytics using Google Looker Studio to providing design recommendations, walked the team through the migration process, helped understand what was needed and what was possible, and guided the team with great care and clarity to the best solutions for students.

Phase 1: Current Design and Data Analytics

To understand the needs of this project, the team first needed to understand the current page's design, pitfalls and analytics.

I set up a Google Looker Studio dashboard from Google Analytics to understand current student needs for both the individual page as well as a holistic subpage analysis. Key points we learned from the analytics data was:

1. Student traffic in overall students subsection was high. However, the landing page showed minimal traffic.

2. High traffic pages in the subsection were the Academic Calendar, Tuition & Fees, Bills/Payments, and Residence Halls.

3. Bounce rate for the student landing page was high. Average time on page was also fairly low. This meant students would go to the current landing page, not find useful information, and promptly exit.

Overall, findings show that the /students landing page was providing minimal information for students and did not serve as a meaningful resource to the student experience.

We attempted 3 different versions:

1. By user type: We attempted to find common user types in order to address a variety of needs by a variety of students. These were for Undergraduate, Graduate, International and Visiting Students.

2. After gathering insight into the current site architecture for the /students subsection, we based option 2 on this architecture based on categories.

3. Option 3 was similar to Option 2 with less variety in categories.

Ultimately, we felt that the student journey felt more appropriately reflected through Option 2. By having top links, student guides categorized links, and a Get Help section, a large volume of students had more opportunity to find resources without feeling contained into a type of category.

Phase 3: Usability Testing

To further understand the needs of student, the Usability Lab hosted hour-long one-on-one feedback sessions with 7 students about the current /students page on NYU.edu, as well as a potential new design for the page. Participants were asked questions/to complete tasks using the new design.

Overall, students said that the new page is a huge improvement from the current version. Some key findings were:

• The information felt more relevant and comprehensive (nothing important was missing), and it was organized in a more intuitive way. The page also wasn’t too long.

• Students thought the sequence of the different sections (Information for…, Student Guides, Resources, etc.) made sense.

• All of the students agreed it was helpful to centralize resources of this nature, but had conflicted reactions as to whether or not they’d actually use this page. Since their familiarity and use of university resources shifts as they go from new to seasoned student, certain aspects of this page would remain helpful for them while others less so.

  • 4 students said that while these resources would be helpful as new students, they’d been at NYU long enough to know how to locate these resources in other ways, or they’d memorized most of the information. They mentioned finding this information through their advisors, links/tabs they’d bookmarked, their academic program, or simply Google.

Phase 4: Building out the Site & Final Feedback

With student feedback and analytics in our back pocket, we went along and began to further design the page. Much of the wireframe stayed intact, with some additional tweaks to wording. We removed "Information For" to limit categorization of students and made some changes in design choices to emphasize some sections.

After building out the site in our content staging environment, we shared with key stakeholders throughout student affairs (Student Health Center, Student Affairs, Wasserman Career Development Center, etc) to receive final feedback.

Phase 5: Launch and Lessons Learned

On January 23, 2023, we launched the final Students landing page.

Some lesson learned:

1. Students (and users) may want different things than we anticipate. Be willing to adapt to change and grow alongside your users.

2. Balance user needs with reasonable expectations. Sometimes, students suggested features that may not have been compatible or feasible with our resources. Work as best as possible with what you have and take wins when you can.

3. This page is a work in progress. While finalized in its current form, student and user needs may change over time. Seasonal audits of the page are necessary to ensure the page remains relevant.

4. Measuring success of this page will be based off user engagement and analytics of the page. We will continue to monitor our dashboard to see how the page is used among students and make recommendations as needed.