The Brief & Background
The Research Gateway navigation was modeled off of the internal reporting structure. After a set of user testing, it was clear that our users were confused and frustrated. The Research Gateway (Gateway) supports all research done at the University of Arizona (UA), an R1 research institute. The Gateway receives >300K page views a year and is a necessity in the UA environment. There are 13 key contributing departments for the Gateway.
The Vice President of Research at the University of Arizona responded to the complaints by tasking the Research Communications department to redesign the Gateway.
What I Did
I self-assigned the task of a first draft redesign plan. My plan included tiered buy-in and roll-out tactics to ensure all 13 contributing departments were heard and to navigate the political landscape.
I had done the initial user testing on the Gateway about a year before the request was made. Seeing all of the issues first hand, I began the conversation to redesign the Gateway. I began research into large-scale user-centric navigation rebuilds. After putting together a production plan with roles and responsibilities to outline the timeline, I presented my plan to the Research Communications Leadership.
