User personas created for a division-wide website strategy. 

The website strategy was developed to provide an overall direction and concept for the website restructuring to maximize the user experience for the Michigan State Residential & Hospitality Services division.

Each component of the situational analysis was meant to provide background and rationale on decisions made and future direction. It is through collaboration, transparency, respect for each other, and a strong team dynamic that successful web solutions are developed. The overall strategic goal was to establish a consistency of vision, effective communication, traceability and accountability.

Audience

Key stakeholders from university residential and hospitality services, including the student union, university activities board, student events, university debit card system, tennis center, golf course, housing, dining, and conference and event planning.

Behavior Desired

The user personas were developed to demonstrate how difficult it was for a website visitor to navigate through 40+ websites to learn about and register for campus services.

Content

The primary user types were developed along with suggestions from the key stakeholders, to ensure better deliverables and organizational buy-in.

“User Personas are fictional characters created to represent different user types within a targeted demographic. Personas focus design activities by helping the team prioritize system features and content that best support the audience. They summarize design research or frame user requirements. Personas can be used to capture the organization’s understanding of the target audience to help drive design and prioritize a long list of desired system features.”
Brown, D. (2011). Communicating design developing web site documentation for design and planning. New Riders.

Deliverables

Posters and handouts were developed

Evaluation

This project will create a proposed RHS Web Strategy that is in alignment with divisional and university strategic plans.