Ikra Javed

a storyteller with a knack for thinking outside the box

UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries Website

Problem

The University Libraries at UNC Chapel Hill was underwent an complete reconstruction of the their website— from rearchitecting the content, integrating subsidiary sites, and redesigning the visual experience to better encapsulate the “One Library” brand.

Role

I was the co-leader of the entire website reconstruction in technical learning and training of the UX team on how to use the foundational software for the project (WordPress, Toolset plugin).

I also was the executive lead on end-to-end reconstruction and design of the instruction session content template (consists of 30+ pages and two templates- archive view and single page view).

The Process

Gathering Product Requirements: I lead a design workshop to gather all of the feature requirements of the instruction session template, followed by an affinity diagramming session to identify key content for the template.

Iterative Design: I designed several rounds of the instruction session template in the singular and archive view, based out of the information from the product requirements session.

Stakeholder Research: I orchestrate feedback opportunities to coordinate with stakeholders on content prioritization and strategy.

Information Architecture: Based on the insights from the content authors, I reorganized the content hierarchy, determined the taxonomies and controlled vocabulary, and made information decisions about the content that belonged on the archive view vs. the page view of the template.

Visual Design: I implemented the basic visual design of the template, that features a left-side panel with a blue background off-set by the descriptive information on the right-side of the page.

Final Product

Instruction Session archive view
instruction session singe page view

Lessons Learned

Overall, the process was extremely rigorous and enjoyable going through iteration after iteration. Going forward, I would involve more faculty who are the primary users of this template to do more research. I would also incorporate the visual design integration into the content template, as opposed to having to go back and adjust padding/margins/colors.

css.php