Mesoamerica Center
The Mesoamerica Center is an organization within The University of Texas College of Fine Arts Department of Art and Art History. The center is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of ancient Mayan cultures. It houses an extensive archive and serves as the umbrella to Casa Herra, a teaching and research facility in Guatemala, and the Mesoamerica Meeting, an annual conference on Mesoamerican culture.
Role Researcher/UX Designer
Tools Heuristic Review, Stakeholder Interviews, Google Analytics, and Wireframes
My primary focus was research. The stakeholders had a clear idea of their needs and their growth goals and hoped that a re-energized site would drive the centers' marketing and PR. They were eager to get started. However, with little staffing and complicated schedules to work around, we needed a plan.
Mesoamerica site was the most dynamic and content-rich with current events, archives, and student opportunities. Of its competitors. However, a content audit, made it clear that content and maintenance were significant issues for the center.
The site analytics posed the biggest surprise to the stakeholders. They could easily see the "use value" of the existing website – with high traffic areas to the "about" pages, The "Meso- Meeting" page, and "current events."
The stakeholders created an outline of their ideal site. This gave me insight into how they organized information and where they saw themselves in the future. I could see how to help them streamline content, and develop strategies to avoid excessive and repetitive content.
A task list to 1) learn about tools used in the academic system, how to adapt and apply them to our site, and 2) address the sites' organization and content management.
The knowledge we learned at this point gave us a solid foundation to begin updating the information architecture. Creating a visual diagram of the information architecture that highlighted the areas where the content would need to be regularly updated. set up the big picture for the stakeholders. This helped the stakeholders see the big picture putting into perspective how they could streamline and manage content updates.
Wireframes helped visualize the delivery of information and how the navigation and layout could showcase the center and its growth goals. With the stakeholders on board, the wireframes served as the first level iteration with future iterations expected based on the results of user testing.
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Fantastic client
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Streamlining content
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Utilizing existing University archives
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Google Analytics--and the teachers that helped me understand why I had a large underage demographic
Successes
Surprises
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How involved the stakeholders wanted to be and how organized they were.
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So Much Content!
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Google Analytics 1) volume of traffic to the sight 2) being about to understand a large part of that seasonal research papers for middle schoolers.
Take Aways
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look for answers outside of the norm. Understanding users can lead to richer and direct solutions for the stakeholder and the users.
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the foundations' - solid information architecture helps provide structure for clean concise builds.
From the onset, this project was plagued with delays and staffing issues. One month into the build staffing turnover caused additional delays. The project was put on hold indefinitely. The research completed suggested that if used, the recommendations would have positively impacted usability, driving traffic and increasing the center's visibility and reputation.