UofT Peel Urbanscapes - Jasmine's Portfolio

About UofT PSL - Peel Urbanscapes

PSL (Peel Social Lab) is a destination for UofT's student to come together to have discussions about social inequality and urban politics in the Peel Region and Greater Toronto Area. Some of the topics featured deal with issues of food, housing, gentrification, law and the criminal justice system.

Limitations

Due to the limited time and resources for this project, user interviews, surveys and user testing were not conducted for the re-design. Instead UofT's CMS (content management system), Drupal, guidelines were used to ensure consistency and usability.

Heuristic Evaluation

I conducted a heuristic evaluation to help identify major problems within the site. These issues included problems related to navigation, information layout, error handling, feedback, which are impacting the user's experience.

Content Audit

I also conducted a content audit to identify pages that can either be removed or combined for example, the contact page can contain footer information (social media and email) instead of a webform.

Information Architecture (IA) & Content Reorganization

Due to the design restrictions, there were many iterations of the IA. In addition, the original Wordpress site contained over 60+ articles (including articles that were repeated under different categorizes). With the help of the PSL team, we changed the eight categories to four categorizes with two to three sub-categories. After removing repeated articles we were down to 50. This re-org ensures that the user is not overwhelmed (avoiding cognitive overload) and can easily find the content they are looking for.

Design Constraints & Guidelines

Design constraints were identified and to help in creating wireframes, designing and reorganizing the content. The Guidelines creates a framework to ensure consistency, and usability.

Wireframes & Prototyping

There were various iterations of the wireframes and prototypes due to two reasons:

Hero Images (Image with three to four nav items) are only for the front/home page of a UTM/UofT site.
The goal is to bring the Peel Urbanscapes content under the “umbrella” of the Peel Social Lab from an optics and organizational perspective. This way, the content could also populate the “student research” section of the PSL site.

Live Website

Visit the final design and live website here: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/peel-social-lab/peel-urbanscapes

About UofT PSL - Peel Urbanscapes

PSL (Peel Social Lab) is a destination for UofT's student to come together to have discussions about social inequality and urban politics in the Peel Region and Greater Toronto Area. Some of the topics featured deal with issues of food, housing, gentrification, law and the criminal justice system.

Limitations

Due to the limited time and resources for this project, user interviews, surveys and user testing were not conducted for the re-design. Instead UofT's CMS (content management system), Drupal, guidelines were used to ensure consistency and usability.

Heuristic Evaluation

I conducted a heuristic evaluation to help identify major problems within the site. These issues included problems related to navigation, information layout, error handling, feedback, which are impacting the user's experience.

Content Audit

I also conducted a content audit to identify pages that can either be removed or combined for example, the contact page can contain footer information (social media and email) instead of a webform.

Information Architecture (IA) & Content Reorganization

Due to the design restrictions, there were many iterations of the IA. In addition, the original Wordpress site contained over 60+ articles (including articles that were repeated under different categorizes). With the help of the PSL team, we changed the eight categories to four categorizes with two to three sub-categories. After removing repeated articles we were down to 50. This re-org ensures that the user is not overwhelmed (avoiding cognitive overload) and can easily find the content they are looking for.

Design Constraints & Guidelines

Design constraints were identified and to help in creating wireframes, designing and reorganizing the content. The Guidelines creates a framework to ensure consistency, and usability.

Wireframes & Prototyping

There were various iterations of the wireframes and prototypes due to two reasons:

Hero Images (Image with three to four nav items) are only for the front/home page of a UTM/UofT site.
The goal is to bring the Peel Urbanscapes content under the “umbrella” of the Peel Social Lab from an optics and organizational perspective. This way, the content could also populate the “student research” section of the PSL site.

Live Website

Visit the final design and live website here: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/peel-social-lab/peel-urbanscapes

About UofT PSL - Peel Urbanscapes

PSL (Peel Social Lab) is a destination for UofT's student to come together to have discussions about social inequality and urban politics in the Peel Region and Greater Toronto Area. Some of the topics featured deal with issues of food, housing, gentrification, law and the criminal justice system.

Limitations

Due to the limited time and resources for this project, user interviews, surveys and user testing were not conducted for the re-design. Instead UofT's CMS (content management system), Drupal, guidelines were used to ensure consistency and usability.

Heuristic Evaluation

I conducted a heuristic evaluation to help identify major problems within the site. These issues included problems related to navigation, information layout, error handling, feedback, which are impacting the user's experience.

Content Audit

I also conducted a content audit to identify pages that can either be removed or combined for example, the contact page can contain footer information (social media and email) instead of a webform.

Information Architecture (IA) & Content Reorganization

Due to the design restrictions, there were many iterations of the IA. In addition, the original Wordpress site contained over 60+ articles (including articles that were repeated under different categorizes). With the help of the PSL team, we changed the eight categories to four categorizes with two to three sub-categories. After removing repeated articles we were down to 50. This re-org ensures that the user is not overwhelmed (avoiding cognitive overload) and can easily find the content they are looking for.

Design Constraints & Guidelines

Design constraints were identified and to help in creating wireframes, designing and reorganizing the content. The Guidelines creates a framework to ensure consistency, and usability.

Wireframes & Prototyping

There were various iterations of the wireframes and prototypes due to two reasons:

Hero Images (Image with three to four nav items) are only for the front/home page of a UTM/UofT site.
The goal is to bring the Peel Urbanscapes content under the “umbrella” of the Peel Social Lab from an optics and organizational perspective. This way, the content could also populate the “student research” section of the PSL site.