Overhauling a financial aid website

Overview

Columbia’s financial aid website was in desperate need of a redesign, with over several hundred pages of dense, outdated information and confusing layouts that made it hard for students and their families to find what they needed. It hadn’t been updated in over five years, and there was no consistent content strategy over that time. I became very familiar with the ins and outs of the site through the content inventory and reviewing the site’s analytics and chat transcripts, but talking to students about how they use the site was vital with the new direction of the site. By considering their input, I’ve been able to prioritize the tasks that students need access to throughout their financial aid process in school. Testing these assumptions in the prototype made it more valuable in creating the new pages and eventually preparing for the launch of the new site. 

My role

Project Lead 🙋‍♀️ / Researcher 🤔 / Designer ✍️ / Contributing developer 💻

Process

I started with a content inventory of the existing site to completely understand the structure and get a better sense of the information. After reviewing the site analytics to understand the areas of high traffic, I also conducted interviews with current students to see how they used the site and used that feedback to influence to new site structure. I created a new site map that was based on different student types and tasks. Because most of the content on the existing site had been out of date and overwhelming to users, I made the decision to recreate the site from scratch. This included creating an entirely new information architecture, in addition to designing new page layouts. Once I created wireframes, I worked with a visual designer to create a more cohesive look and feel to match the rest of the Columbia website. We also created an interactive prototype to test with current and prospective students before finalizing the content on the new site and preparing for a site launch. 

Outcomes