National Institute of Health
•
UI/UX Designer
•
2023
Web Portal for Research Consortium
UX Design
Interactive Prototyping
The Team
1 x Product Designer
1 x Content Writer
1 × Project Manager
3 × Developers
My Contribution
UX Design
UI Design
UX Strategy
UX Research
Duration
1 yr. and 7 mo.
JAN 2023 - AUG 2024
Client
NIH (National Institute of Health)
Context
The Coordination, Communication, and Operations Support (CCOS) team supports the NIH’s CTSA Program—a national network of 60+ medical institutions accelerating the translation of research into real-world health solutions.
I led the end-to-end design of a web portal in Figma to support 31K+ users in connecting, collaborating, and accessing resources. I was the sole designer and collaborated closely with developers and project managers to ensure a seamless handoff and a product that balanced user needs with technical feasibility.
Problem
The NIH needed a place for their 60+ medical and research institutions to stay engaged with the consortia and their various groups.
Solution
I worked with the development team and project manager to design a web portal platform while using a human-centered design approach.
Results
Benchmarking with their original web portal, we doubled user engagement rates and increased conversion by 80%.
Approach
For each feature request for the web portal, I followed a similar design process. If available, I would reference the previous web portal to conduct a UX audit, and determine areas for improvements.
I also worked with project stakeholders to learn how previous designs performed in the past. This helped me identify and understand potential user pain points and needs.
During stakeholder interviews, I learned that navigation was one of the largest pain points of the previous web portal. Many items and resources were nested too deeply within the navigation system, making things hard to find.
At the very start of this project, I designed a site map to help our team organize the website's architecture. The site expanded quickly as we rolled out new features, and the site map kept the website's navigation organized, making things easy to find.
Site Map
Research
Stakeholder Interviews
For every feature request I received, I followed a similar research approach. I began with stakeholder interviews to gain as much information as possible.
My goals for these interviews were to:
Gather context and history of the feature
Understand our team's business goals
Align on key requirements and a design concept and
Define the scope of this feature
This helped me start with a design direction and begin investigating potential solutions. I also learn the most about our users through these interviews, and can begin developing artifacts such as identifying our target user types.
Heuristic Evaluations
With no UX Research team and limited budget, I frequently used heuristic evaluations because they are efficient and low-cost, while still holding tons of value.
The original web portal provided a lot of insight, and was especially telling of what our users were used to. I identified areas for improvement to ensure our new web portal was more user-friendly and accessible, while still encapsulating what they're used to.
Design
I created a design system for the web portal to ensure consistency across all features. This also helped improve efficiency and decrease design time by 25%. I created a color palette to ensure color usage for all features were Section 508 Compliant and followed WCAG standards.
Once functional requirements, business goals, and user needs were defined, I began iterating on designs. For large features, I started with wireframes to draft the user flow and lay out the structure of the necessary screens. For smaller features, I went straight to high fidelity designs since I already had a design system to refer to.
I presented my solution to the team and fostered collaborative discussions with the team to gather feedback. I gained more insight on client needs and technical feasibility, and also continued refining requirements and scope. During these sessions I am an advocate for the user and human-centered best practices and translated feedback into actionable design updates.
Outcome
This project had a very strict budget with quick turnaround times, but it was through this ambiguous environment that I learned how to be a flexible and business-oriented designer!
Our site received immense positive feedback from both the client and the users. Benchmarked with the previous web portal, we doubled user engagement and increased conversion rates by 80%. Increased engagement metrics include increased session duration, retention rates, user registration, click rates. We also observed a substantial decrease in drop off rates during onboarding.
Next Project
Inventory Management Tool
