Analysis of what is in place
Starting with an expert review
Four years on from our first collaboration, we meet up with the project team to take stock of the state of the site. The IPAG business school shares direct user feedback with us, and hypotheses for improvement are formed. The new scope is defined: we run a usability audit of the pages prioritised during this first team conversation. The output of this first expert review is a set of usability recommendations at varying priority levels (high, medium, low), grouped under 14 themes (navigation menu, initial browsing experience, information architecture, video and animation content, text readability, text length, the way CTAs are shown, and so on).
Stakeholder interviews
Meeting the expert profiles at IPAG
We then round out the study with stakeholder interviews with different profiles at IPAG: marketing director, digital marketing lead, web project manager, graphic designer, communications officer, and so on.
During these conversations, we ask our contacts about the behaviours of the different types of visitor. We gather feedback on the watchpoints and the strengths, both on the overall experience and on specific pages.
Recommendation co-design workshop
A convergence exercise within the project team
We meet again with the project team to discuss how the recommendations land in the four pages that are priorities for the IPAG team at this stage of the project: the home page, the template page of a programme page, the IPAG experience page, and the page presenting the school.
The thinking focuses mainly on optimising the information architecture. We move into the “live co-sketching” phase, which consists in collectively annotating the main changes to the mockups, through sketches, annotations and diagrams. A few good and bad examples, drawn from the sites of direct and indirect competitors, are reviewed to draw lessons from them.
Formalising the recommendations
Before and after our intervention
Following the workshop, we formalise how the produced recommendations are integrated.
For each page, the typography and spacing are standardised, the format of each type of content is reworked, the text content is reorganised in some places.
Each page then shows its “before/after the integration of the recommendations”, in both its desktop and mobile versions.
Components revisited
Reworking the architecture and the components
The look of certain components is reworked to give shape to the usability recommendations.
For instance, user-control tools are added to the sliders; the hierarchy of titles and subtitles is harmonised in the information cards and the page sections; the video formats are differentiated from other types of content (articles, events…).
Whenever possible, content is optimised: in that respect, the treatment of the programme page is particularly significant. Content about the way the programme is organised by year of study was shown in several places, redundantly. In the new version, the way the information is presented is optimised so that there is dedicated content for each year, and an accordion mechanism lets the user reach the content they are looking for more quickly.
Delivery and acceptance testing
A shared base of resources
Along with the screens, we deliver a design system with the different components, colours and typography used. We continue to support the IPAG business school and the technical development teams in new co-design phases of the showcase site (opens in new window).
