Design Rationale

NASIG

NASIG is an independent organization working to advance and transform the management of information resources. The ultimate goal is to facilitate and improve the distribution, acquisition, and long-term accessibility of information resources in all formats and business models.

Redesign Areas

Based on the inputs from user study and initial overview, the team decided to address the below issues.

1. Homepage- The user study revealed that it was difficult to find information about NASIG. The subjects were confused with the tagline and wondered about the graphics on the homepage. The basic information was missing on the homepage.
2. Account Creation- The account creation functionality included the change of password on the first login after setting up the account with a password. Moreover, the password field was a text box.

• Navigation- The users found overwhelming links on the menu. Additionally, the site’s various pages used a lot of hyperlinks.

Redesign Ideas

1. There isn’t a “sign up” tag under login section which it should have been. Normally, users expect to be able to create an account from the login page, otherwise, users may feel weird about the website.
2. There isn’t a search bar regarding the contents of the website. Some users tend to find everything through search bar on a website, they don’t want to look up the whole page and find the exact page they need. So, it may be critical for a website.
3. The input box of the password in registration part is in plain text, which means people can actually intercept users’ password by peeking the screen, it is an essential security issue.
4. An overall introduction and tagline should be presented clearly on the homepage. The homepage will give the very first impression of the website to users, it should show users what the website could do for them. If users fail to find the functionalities of a new website through the homepage, they may just close the website and look for something else.
5. The use of drop-down box on organization choosing in registration section is not appropriate cause there are so many choices. Users will get tired looking for their organizations through the drop-down box. Therefore, an input box with keyword searching would be better.

Homepage

Presently, the introduction is on the right corner of the homepage, however, we’d like to people see the introduction clearly when entered the homepage. Also, the font size is too small and give an impression that the content is not important. Therefore, the introduction was placed at the center of the homepage in a more prominent way.

Current introduction on the homepage:

The redesign idea:

With the introduction in the center of the home page and the highlight font indicating the introduction, users will notice and understand what this website is about within 5 seconds after entering the website.

Pros: Allow new people to generally understand the website as soon as possible on the homepage.

Cons: May weaken some other information on the home page.

Trade-offs: How to balance the prominent level between the introduction and other information on the homepage, you want people to see the introduction at first sight, but you do not want them to only focus on the introduction.

Remaining problem:

1. What to show on the homepage needs to be seriously considered.
2. How to arrange all the information in an appropriate priority needs to be decided.

Tagline:

The tagline of NASIG website is: “TRANSFORMING THE INFORMATION COMMUNITY”.

However, the tagline is not prominent or clear enough to catch users’ attention. The font size, font color, and the position make it hard to notice the tagline for a new user when entering the homepage.

Therefore, to redesign this, we placed the tagline right under the “NASIG” tag with a more prominent font style:

Pros: People will notice and understand the tagline easily.

Cons: May weaken the drop-down menu below the tagline.

Trade-offs: How to adjust the proportion of the website name tag, the tagline and the drop-down menu so that people could see all of them clearly without missing any of them. The consistency between the tagline and the header of the website.

Menu

1. One of the problems with this website is that it has too many primary pages. It needs to create some child pages in order to clean up the clutter. Election Process, Bylaws, Board Minutes, Presidents are moved to be subpages of the page directly above it.
2. Membership Communication and Awards were added to the Membership tab because they were specifically regarding members
3. The election process and bylaws are now under policies because they are topics related to policy
4. Board minutes are now under the executive board.
5. NASIG history now includes the presidents.
6. The NASIG logos are placed under publications because the logos are only necessary when material is being published
7. Core competencies are placed only in Continuing Education to reduce duplication
8. The calendar is moved over the executive board and policies because we believe that people will want quick access to what is happening in the org.
9. Policies are now on executive board because those explain more than anything else what the organization is about
10. In the second option, a new drop-down menu called “administration” is created so that the board and committees are still highlighted without overshadowing other important pages in the about section

The downside of the first option is that it really does demote the executive board and committees. In addition to that, the “about” menu should focus on the organization itself, not the officers who are in charge of it. Given that, a new menu for the executive board and committees. The downside of this, however, is that it adds yet another menu for people to navigate. However, it is justified because it clarifies where information can be found and there is a lot of empty space in the menu bar.

Upon iteration, the homepage was redesigned and focus on user experience was addresses. Below is the wireframe for the homepage.

The Sign In and Register link were placed at the top to eliminate the cumbersome job of searching for the kinks. Additionally, a Search bar is placed at the top for user convenience.

NASIG logo was placed both in the header and footer. The header would contain the information about NASIG too. In addition to that, horizontal and vertical navigation was implemented to minimize the submenus under the main menu.

The “JOIN NASIG” is highlighted in green to attract user’s attention.

The center of the page consists of “Sponsored Events/Conferences”, “Upcoming Events”, “Announcements” information. Previously, the users faced difficulty in finding information about the upcoming conferences and announcements. The reason for placing the links at the center is to provide information to the user from the homepage at the first glance; the user need not surf through other links.

This work has currently only focused on a first redesign perspective only. The main idea was to allow users to find relevant information in an organized and consistent manner. The website needs additional work such as
1. Coming up with the content on about NASIG. A better tag line needs to be defined and emphasized.
2. There is also need to redesign the entire about page as there is lot of important information that is all over the place. This is partially fixed by the use of the left menu having the download forms link which can house all other additional documents in the future.
3. The design in terms of font, font color, font size, animations could also improve the aesthetics of the site completely.
4. The site uses information from google when search is used. This needs a better implementation to organize the data that has been searched and displayed to the user.