Challenge

UCSD's Advanced Computing and Telecommunications (ACT) Team was made aware by an internal customer satisfaction survey that the university's main intranet portal, while widely-used and considered effective, was in need of refinement. For example, the site's previous navigation scheme required users to wait up to 10 seconds after selecting a main navigation option for the sub-options to load. In addition, the wording of some of the site's sub-navigation labels was unclear. Since the site is up to four "levels" deep, and is accessed by thousands of university students, staff, and administrators daily, this delay was a source of concern. The ACT Team sought to improve the site's navigation scheme and thereby better serve its user base and receive a more favorable score on the next years' satisfaction survey.

Solution

We planned, executed, and reported on the results of a round of Usability Testing done to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and intuitiveness of the site's main navigation options. We also performed an Expert Design Review to highlight the site's issues relative to best-practice Web design standards. The combined deliverables from these two services clearly identified the navigation issues and led to the implementation of the current "mouse over" behavior for the site's main navigation scheme. The names of some main navigation and sub-navigation options were also updated as a result of the test feedback provided. (See http://blink.ucsd.edu [first select "Buying" tab, then select left-side navigation option]). During the tests we also assessed users' reactions to a new search results page, and made a few improvement suggestions.

Results

The updated main and sub-navigation scheme reduced the time it takes the 10,000 daily site users to navigate to second-level "how to" pages to just 2 seconds, resulting in an estimated 110 unproductive "wait" hour savings each business day. The updates made also contributed to an improvement in the ACT team's satisfaction survey ratings for 2003. As a side benefit, the positive feedback received on the site's new search results page served to validate the new page content and layout.

"Before" screen sample