Website Redesign: MaRS Entrepreneur’s Toolkit
Our 3 person UX Capstone team worked with MaRS’ Business Acceleration Program to redesign the Entrepreneur’s Toolkit, an online collection of resources.
Overview
Problem
Users found it difficult to find resources on the site. The MaRS team felt that they weren’t leveraging the Toolkit to its full potential.
Our challenge was to redesign the toolkit to encourage more discovery, be more searchable, help users more easily find resources, and increase user engagement with resources.
Solution
Develop a microsite with a home page built to support search and that allows users to group and save resources they find in the MaRS library.
Implement a content strategy which incorporates a chatbot and supports skimming and scanning.
Context
Timeline: 8 months (2 semesters)
Tools Used: Axure, Balsamiq, Sketch, Invision
Deliverables
Personas, Insight Statements, User Stories, Scenarios, Use Cases, Wireframes, Hi-Fi Prototypes, Concept Diagram, Usability Report
Skills Developed
User Interviews, Usability Testing, Heuristic Evaluation, Participant Recruitment, Competitive Analysis, Design Sprints, Workshop Facilitation, Surveys, Wireframing, Prototyping
Our Process
Phase 1: Discovery
Approach
To understand our users and context, we outlined our high-level questions and used several UX research methods to find the answers.
Deliverables
We translated what we learned into insight/problem statements, user stories, scenarios and personas.
Insight Statements
Personas
Getting feedback from the team on the personas.
My Contribution
Leading participant recruitment for our user interviews.
Advocating for using analogous inspiration as one of our research methods.
Drafting and finalizing our personas.
As a team member I contributed to our heuristic evaluation; SWOT analysis; planning, moderating and note taking for usability sessions and interviews; planning or co-facilitating stakeholder meetings.
Phase 2: Ideate
Approach
We held a design sprint to start thinking of solutions. We developed the design concepts generated from the sprint iteratively.
Design Sprint
To kick-off phase 2, we held a one day design sprint with entrepreneurs and MaRS staff.
We created journey maps, completed “crazy 8’s” rapid prototyping, and conducted zen voting to generate ideas.
Zen voting after our Crazy 8’s rapid prototyping.
Deliverables
Wireframes to test our design concepts with users. A concept diagram which summarized flows, concepts, and features.
My contribution
Planning the design sprint agenda and creating a design brief which summarized our initial research.
Developing our chatbot concept and making its wireframes.
Created a concept diagram to summarize our concepts, features, and flows.
As a team member, I co-facilitated the sprint with my teammates.
Crowd sourced design concepts/guidelines from our MaRS design sprint.
Phase 3: Prototype & Test
Approach
To create our final design, we developed features in sprints and tested our high fidelity prototypes.
Usability Testing
Once we developed a high-fidelity prototype, we conducted summative usability testing with users and held two design review sessions with our stakeholders.
Deliverables
Hi-Fidelity prototype of the microsite. A report which included a content strategy and chat bot recommendations.
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
My Contribution
Creating a chatbot high-fidelity prototype using Axure and Sketch.
Planning Wizard of Oz testing to simulate a chat interaction. Creating usability tasks and script for the chatbot MVP.
Writing chatbot implementation recommendations for our client.
As a team member, moderating and note taking during usability sessions; writing the final report; helping to plan and facilitate stakeholder design reviews and our final presentation.
Participant interacting with the chatbot MVP during a usability test session