DMDL/ECT Website Redesign

Overview


The redesign will address the problems different learners face on the ECT website. The learners in this case are the people who want to learn about the field of ECT from the website. Each need different knowledge because their learning goals are different:   

prospective ECT/DMDL majors: want to learn about the program requirements, courses, admission process, research and faculty. They also want to learn the benefits of the program, whether ECT is the right career for them. 

administrators who may not know what ECT is: want to learn about the other admins, how the administration work in this field.

funders or research organizations: want to learn whether the research groups are addressing the right research questions
 and their current projects, students and faculty members that are involved in these research, past and current papers 

potential internship sites or other external partners: want to learn the courses taken and whether these courses are appropriate for their internship program. 

scholars or professionals from the field but not familiar with our program: want to learn current students' interests

Redesign process
1- Define our target audience
2- Define the learning goals for each audience

• start by picking up a target audience, and a learning goal for this audience.
• create a scenario around this learning goal and the website
• think about the problems occurred in this scenario
• from Bloom's taxonomy choose the level of the learning that is already in the website design 
• from Bloom's taxonomy choose the level of the learning that we want to achieve

3- Analyze the needs to accomplish these learning goals 
4- Assessment of the needs and goals
5- Requirements, specs and wireframes

Let's analyze what we need in our design to accomplish each learning goal

prospective majors: they would like to see the degree requirements, courses, how to apply and ongoing research as well as the research groups or labs. These are already on the website. However, a prospective student would like to know whether this is the right program for him/her. The courses, internships and research fields are one important portion of this decision making process but knowing what can be done after graduation is the more important. The website is missing information about the former students, what they are doing or where they work. There is also no information about student life at NYU, campus area, the city, and etc. 

administrators who may not know what ECT is: 

funders or research organizations: funders would like to know what kind of research is currently being held, what the focus of the research groups are, how important the research is in the program. They would like access to papers that research groups have published. The website has information about the two research groups, but one has to navigate to another website to check the people involved in the research or the previous research papers are not available. 

potential internship sites or other external partners: These group would like to know the courses and master requirements. However, they also need to know what projects the students are working on, and also more information about the students in this program. 

scholars or professionals from the field but not familiar with our program: They need to know: Who is this program for? What research is going on? What does the program offer to students? Am I a good fit? To get answers of these question, they need to navigate through a different lists. Most of the questions should be answered by an insider, which there is no access to on the current website.