Neuroprotection Labs
Timeline:
July 2022 - Present
User Research
Content Strategy
Low/Mid Fidelity Wireframing
UX/UI Design
Responsibilities:
Context:
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Overview
Stellar Chance Laboratories 307 and 308, both affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, conduct research to prevent occular damage. Both these labs needed websites to interact with a variety of potential visitors, including:
Students interested in conducting research with the lab
Donors and patients interested in supporting the labs’ research efforts
Other scientists in the field who want to learn more about their research
Competitive Analysis
By looking at the strengths and opportunities for improvement from other lab websites, I was interested in using that information to optimize the user experience of my own website design.
Analyzing the “strengths” and “weaknesses” of other lab websites
Some takeaways included:
A consistent color palette for a clean, professional look
Use images and infographics to supplement scientific text
Videos and animations to create a visually striking experience
User Interviews
I then conducted interviews with three student researchers within the lab to learn more about both how they came to work at this lab and their own experiences using lab websites. As a way to organize the qualitative data, I created different affinity maps to note specific trends or themes.
I found that a common pain point that arose was the inefficiency of the application process; students would email Private Investigators of labs and never hear back. I was curious to see if the website could somehow facilitate a smoother process for both sides.
Students also made it very clear that the quality and quantity of research was very important when choosing a lab to apply to. This was information that I wanted to make readily accessible to site visitors.
Sitemap
Initially, the Private Investigators of both labs wanted their own individual websites. My goal was to keep the information architecture the same for both sites in order to maintain a consistent visitor experience across the two labs.
The first iteration of the Sitemap
However, after much deliberation, the PIs decided that they would rather have both of their labs featured on a single website under the name of “Neuroprotection Labs”; they felt that this better represented their collaborative nature and overlap of resources. We also discussed including a landing page to allow visitors to choose which particular lab website they wanted to visit.
The most updated version of the Sitemap
To represent the two labs individually on this joint website, I opted to have Ross Lab and Shindler Lab be separate options on the Navigation Bar with the same layout / navigation of pages. As the lab relied heavily on donations to fund their research, Donate became its own category so as to make the option immediately available to site visitors.
Low-Fidelity Sketches
In designing these low-fidelity sketches, my focus was on presenting different ideas on paper and highlighting big picture concepts that addressed the insights from both the competitive analyses and the user interviews.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
My goal with the mid-fidelity wireframes was to still focus on big picture concepts of my designs, while beginning to include example images that helped stakeholders envision the final product. I wanted to make sure that my original intentions for the designs remained the same as the fidelity evolved.
Research Page
Publications Page
Contact Page
Donate Page
This project is on hold for the time being - please check back soon for updates!
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