Taking place during my first work-term in September of 2024, I was hired as a Digital Marketing Specialist for CORE, a world renowned research clinic that has been responsible for the development of many contact lenses, dry eye therapies, and related products, which are relied on by consumers worldwide.

CORE's main purpose is to conduct independent research studies to test new ocular products, such as new material for a contact lens, paying residents of the Waterloo area to become participants. When a new study is created, eligible participants are selected from CORE’s database of over 6,000 people and asked to participate. Recruiting new volunteers to grow this database is paramount to ensuring the success of these studies, as well as maintaining CORE’s international status as a reputable and dependable research centre.

CORE"s current website has a lot of potential to be great in both aesthetics and function, but fails to meet some fundamental web design principles. Below is some key issues I found during my analysis as well as a breakdown of why their current site layout does not work.
• Poor image selection, ineffective font choice and outdated design elements created poor brand image
• Topics that need priority are led astray from user due to overbearring amount of options to click on
• Lack of clear CTA's to support the research studies, which should be number 1 priority
• Unprofessional and even untrustworthy (huge deal)
• Poor website layout, leading to confusion and friction

Before I could start finding issues with the website, I needed to identify the direct and indirect stakeholders that the website is currently affecting. At first, these stakeholders were created from past experience and a small amount of secondary research and are meant to be updated after meeting real individuals that fall under these groups. From the list of stakeholders that I had created, I chose two to serve as the personas for the redesign, with a heavy focus being put onto their projected values. Here are the two stakeholders that I ended up choosing for my persona.

Using the persona that the stakeholders provided, I had to find a couple of people that would fit into either group. I was able to find two people that matched the description of "Potential Research Participants" persona, and three people that matched the description of the "Potential Future Employees" persona. In order to ensure that my presumptions about my stakeholder's values were empirically sound, I employed a method that combined two traditional user tests together; those being a semi formal interview and a subsequent user test with CORE's current website. I started with the semi-formal interview in order to establish a base of rapport and understanding between me and the interviewee, mostly about what I was trying to achieve with the interview itself and what my overall topic was centered around. After 3/4 of the interview was complete, I would introduce the website to the user and assign them a task to complete. I asked for the user to follow the speak aloud method while maneuvering through the task, which would enable me to understand their first impressions of the design itself. After the task was complete, the interview would resume and I would follow up with questions focused on their experience with the website, narrowing in on what values they felt were present and at what parts. Users from stakeholder 1 were asked questions that centered around their decision making process for buying or using medical devices (such as contact lenses) whereas users from stakeholder 2 were asked questions regarding employment preferences.

Now having a testable and functional prototype for my redesign, I could now test the same users that were interviewed to obtain even deeper insight into what they truly want from this website. For stakeholders, I reused a slightly modified version of the semi-formal interview and then asked them to use the new prototype. After the walk through was complete, the interview would resume and I would follow up with questions focused on their experience with the website, narrowing in on what values they felt were present and at what parts. To gain further insights, I also conducted informal interviews with multiple classmates with hopes of acquiring technical feedback on the website's layout and features. I first informed them on the goals of my project and the organization itself, and then I asked them to go through the prototype and list any changes they would want to make. Down below are the main insights I was able to derive from my users and classmates.

The final version consisted of a highly tailored and value-driven redesign of CORE’s website which successfully promoted stakeholder values. This project demonstrated how even good designs can falter if they are not properly aligned with users. This final prototype achieved a 100% in my GBDA 306 course, which I am extremely proud of. Here is the final prototype below.