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<\/a>The remodeled ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ home page as it will appear to a desktop user. The remodel team’s use of “personas” inspired the creation of the four Audience Message Boxes geared to specific constituencies.<\/p><\/div>\n
Two years ago, one in six visitors to bates.edu<\/em> viewed the site on a mobile device. Now it’s nearly one in three.<\/p>\n While “mobile drove this remodel,\u201d says Jeremy Cluchey, director of creative design for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Office, “the fact is, the trend toward greater mobile traffic is a worldwide reality.”<\/p>\n All about making a website that\u2019s easier to use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ensuring that every website feature and piece of content renders well on tiny screens as well as big desktop monitors is as much a design and architectural challenge as it is a technical one, Cluchey says.<\/p>\n In that spirit, the new bates.edu<\/em> incorporates a major homepage redesign and a new site-wide navigation menu, among other changes that, in the end, are all about making a website that\u2019s easier to use for all visitors.<\/p>\n When it comes to website redesign, you need to know your users. And while 2.5 billion people worldwide are online, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ team zeroed in on just 12 users during the remodel process.<\/p>\n The 12 users, however, represent a conceptual twist: They’re “personas,” fictional people who represent the major public user groups of bates.edu<\/em>.<\/p>\n To create the personas, a 12-person Usability Group, comprising staff from BCO and Information and Library Services, interviewed 50 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ stakeholders from 16 college offices that communicate with various external audiences.<\/p>\n Their expertise informed the group\u2019s understanding of the college\u2019s many audiences and fueled the creation of the personas, the use of which is standard for usability projects, Cluchey explains.<\/p>\n As an example of the site’s responsiveness, the new home page will look like this to a tablet user.<\/p><\/div>\n “We\u2019ve given each ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ persona a photo, a name, a hometown, and a set of specific attributes, including preferences, goals and top tasks for using the website,\u201d Cluchey says. \u201cWe\u2019ve created a list of do\u2019s and don\u2019ts for communicating with them. While they\u2019re not real users, they could be.\u201d<\/p>\n Diverse across gender, age, geography and race, and featuring various levels of engagement with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the personas include prospective students and parents, current parents, alumni and non-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ users such as a prospective staff member and a journalist.<\/p>\n For example, a persona representing an accepted student from Portland, Ore., wants to understand her financial aid package. The persona of a young alumna wants to network with other alumni and wants her opinion about ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ issues heard, while the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumnus who\u2019s also a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ parent wants coordinated parent-alumni communications.<\/p>\n With this gallery of personas in hand, the BCO remodel team \u2014 Cluchey, Web Designer Barry Costa, Senior Digital Analyst Nicholas O\u2019Brien and Web Designer\/Developer Jake Paris \u2014 examined existing metrics and other user information, conducted campus listening sessions and implemented a website survey tool to “home in on the key concerns and priorities of our users,” Cluchey says.<\/p>\n Armed with a feedbag full of feedback, the group identified several major goals and set out to create solutions to meet them. Goals such as:<\/p>\n<\/a>