WMUC Radio Station
Role: UX Designer | Nov 2024 | Fundamentals of HCI Design Sprint
WMUC, the University of Maryland's student radio station, sought to enhance its online presence and user experience. The website presented usability challenges and lacked a modern design, limiting its engagement with users. This case study explores the user-centered redesign process, focusing on improving the landing page and a second-level page. By addressing these issues and developing an interactive prototype, the project leveraged UX research and iterative testing to deliver a more accessible and engaging online experience.
The Website
Problem Statement
The WMUC website faced challenges with affordances/signifiers, the Gulf of Evaluation, and the Gulf of Execution, leading to confusion and inefficiencies for users. Through a group evaluation, we identified critical issues that hindered navigation, feedback, and interaction, impacting the usability for undergraduate students. The website required a streamlined solution to enhance clarity, improve system feedback, and ensure intuitive interactions to better serve its intended audience.
Proposed Solution
Our team developed a prototype redesigning the WMUC landing and "Listen" pages to address usability challenges. The landing page features an updated radio player with three-dimensional buttons, providing clear affordances, and real-time feedback through “Connecting” and “Now Playing” messages. Enhanced menu navigation includes hover effects on volume dials and buttons, signaling interactivity. The "Listen" page now displays the currently playing show, song, and DJ, along with tabs for switching channels and a functional play button. This redesign improves the Gulf of Evaluation and Execution by providing intuitive navigation, clear feedback, and the ability to seamlessly listen to radio shows.
Primary Users
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College Students: Those interested in exploring music, photography, journalism, and local events.
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Music Enthusiasts: Students looking for information on music schedules, artist articles, and events.
Low Fidelity Sketches
User Testing
Task: Identify all the unique ways to listen to something.
Criteria: Time to task completion and user feedback.
Methodology: Observe users navigating the original website and prototype, using the think-aloud protocol for qualitative insights. Mark down their progress after one minute and when they willingly stop.
Results and Feedback
Original Website:
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Participants ignored key elements, believing they were ads.
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Confusion navigating back from “ghost sites.”
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Limited listening options (only 2 found).
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Redesigned Prototype:
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Tabs and clear organization.
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Suggested adding dropdowns for "Last Played" and "Coming Up Next."
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Proposed captions for dials and additional home button.
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Reflection
This was my first time doing a design sprint with a team following the process of interaction design. During the first sprint, my team used distributed platforms like Google Meet, Google Docs, and Figma for real-time and asynchronous collaboration, effectively balancing schedules and locations. In Part II, working in person improved communication through visual cues and gestures, making tasks more streamlined. While both methods were effective, in-person collaboration was the most efficient, and we’d prioritize it in the future.
It was challenging to work with others in regards to creative differences, such as using convergent thinking to decide whose designs to use based on the low fidelity sketches each team member drew. Despite our differences though, we were all able to collaborate and compromise when needed in order to prioritize our proposed solution and to meet our deadlines. Having only two weeks to deliver our project also set some constraints in the scope of our prototype, but I felt that this helped us to deliver results in a timely manner.