nyu.edu/students refresh

In 2022-23,  as part of a larger NYU initiative alongside IDEO to improve the overall student experience, The NYU Digital Communications team alongside Student Affairs teamed up to refresh the Students landing page. 

As a Web Content Producer, I was a key team member throughout the refresh process. I shared Google Analytics using Google Looker Studio to providing design recommendations, walked the team through the migration process, helped understand what was needed and what was possible, and guided the team with great care and clarity to the best solutions for students.

I set up a Google Looker Studio dashboard from Google Analytics to understand current student needs for both the individual page as well as a holistic subpage analysis. Key points we learned from the analytics data was:

1. Student traffic in overall students subsection was high. However, the landing page showed minimal traffic.

2. High traffic pages in the subsection were the Academic Calendar, Tuition & Fees, Bills/Payments, and Residence Halls.

3. Bounce rate for the student landing page was high. Average time on page was also fairly low. This meant students would go to the current landing page, not find useful information, and promptly exit.

Overall, findings show that the /students landing page was providing minimal information for students and did not serve as a meaningful resource to the student experience.

We attempted 3 different versions:

1. By user type: We attempted to find common user types in order to address a variety of needs by a variety of students. These were for Undergraduate, Graduate, International and Visiting Students.

2. After gathering insight into the current site architecture for the /students subsection, we based option 2 on this architecture based on categories.

3. Option 3 was similar to Option 2 with less variety in categories.

Ultimately, we felt that the student journey felt more appropriately reflected through Option 2. By having top links, student guides categorized links, and a Get Help section, a large volume of students had more opportunity to find resources without feeling contained into a type of category.

Overall, students said that the new page is a huge improvement from the current version. Some key findings were: 

• The information felt more relevant and comprehensive (nothing important was missing), and it was organized in a more intuitive way. The page also wasn’t too long. 

• Students thought the sequence of the different sections (Information for…, Student Guides, Resources, etc.) made sense. 

• All of the students agreed it was helpful to centralize resources of this nature, but had conflicted reactions as to whether or not they’d actually use this page. Since their familiarity and use of university resources shifts as they go from new to seasoned student, certain aspects of this page would remain helpful for them while others less so. 

  • 4 students said that while these resources would be helpful as new students, they’d been at NYU long enough to know how to locate these resources in other ways, or they’d memorized most of the information. They mentioned finding this information through their advisors, links/tabs they’d bookmarked, their academic program, or simply Google. 

After building out the site in our content staging environment, we shared with key stakeholders throughout student affairs (Student Health Center, Student Affairs, Wasserman Career Development Center, etc) to receive final feedback.

Some lesson learned:

1. Students (and users) may want different things than we anticipate. Be willing to adapt to change and grow alongside your users.

2. Balance user needs with reasonable expectations. Sometimes, students suggested features that may not have been compatible or feasible with our resources. Work as best as possible with what you have and take wins when you can. 

3. This page is a work in progress. While finalized in its current form, student and user needs may change over time. Seasonal audits of the page are necessary to ensure the page remains relevant.

4. Measuring success of this page will be based off user engagement and analytics of the page. We will continue to monitor our dashboard to see how the page is used among students and make recommendations as needed.

On February 27, 2023, we rejoined to update the team on a a few pending items, including an update on our iterative approach to launching icons and how we plan to move forward with an ongoing Phase 6 of the project.

Icons: With the assistance of our Art Director and UXbv Designer, we reimagined the landing page top links to include 4 icons:

These methodology behind these icons were based in using existing resources, simplicity in design and re-imagining ideas. 

For the first two icons (Albert and Brightspace), we re-used the same design as our NYU Mobile icons to be consistent in branding and diminish wait times for product owner approval of these services.

For the StudentLink design, we were provided some inspiration from the StudentLink team to work off on. These designs included a more complex laptop/thought bubble design or people-oriented design. We did not go with the people-oriented design to not conflict with the existing design of our PeopleSync mobile icon, which includes three people figures. The team took the "laptop" design and simplified it to include a link within the laptop in order to make scaling the image as easy as possible without losing any clear visuals.

For the Academic Calendar design, we had to work around our existing Events Calendar mobile icon, which is a simple calendar icon. To balance users' general idea of a calendar without copying the original Events Calendar design, the team decided to use a calendar as a foundation for the design and include an inner figure pertaining to academia (in this case, a graduation cap). This kept the original idea of a calendar but also instilled an idea of academic-related events rather than only general events.

Overall, the clients were pleased with the designs. We requested further approval from the Registrars' office and StudentLink team and were able to launch. 

Moving forward, the next phase of our project is to conduct a more in-depth content audit of the /students subsection and establish an editorial calendar in consultation with assigned content owners.

Recommendations to identify sitewide improvement opportunities: 

• Generate semi-annual reports to be circulated among stakeholders (January and June) 

• Identify top current student-centric keywords being searched for NYU & peer institutions (if/where applicable)

• Reconvene to analyze user pathways 

• Meet with stakeholders/content owners to address duplicated content & content gaps & broken links

• Work with stakeholders and students to determine areas of priority which will inform information architecture. Examples of co-design sessions may include card-sorting and thinking aloud.