The aim of the project was to redesign the home page of Mendeley which would help the users to understand the new value proposition of Mendeley in a clear and simplified way.
The project also aimed at benchmarking some of the metrics like perception of trust, content clarity, etc. The development for the redesign will take place in 2023.
This project gave me an opportunity to work on the end-to-end design process. I worked on the planning, execution and delivery of the project in collaboration with our UX lead, 2 other UX designers and other cross-functional teams.
My responsibilities in the project included:
Facilitated design sessions to brainstorm ideas to come up with design concepts. Designed and proposed solutions based on feedback from the users, stakeholders and the wider team.
Delivered the new home page UI design in collaboration with the tech team. Actively sought feedback from the design team and wider team (product and tech) to ensure the home page UI design conforms to high standards and communicates the value proposition in an engaging way.
Planned and carried out the user research using a hybrid approach (moderated and unmoderated user testing) with the UX researcher to validate new concept designs for the home page.
Helped the stakeholders from Product, Tech, Analytics and Marketing teams to align on the focus areas of the home page with the help of design sessions. This also helped to align on the new value proposition.
Accessibility was at the core of the designs since the beginning of the process. This included work on the colour contrast, screen reader support, keyboard-only navigation, etc.
Helped the team to incorporate unmoderated user testing method by introducing a new tool called Ballpark. Overcame the challenges of learning a new research method and a new tool.
Worked closely with the dev team throughout the design process which helped to built trust and reduce uncertainties.
Supported data analytics initiatives which helped to decide the success metrics for mendeley.com.
The project started with discussions with the UX lead to understand the scope and context of the project. We wanted to utilise the opportunity of tech rewrite to redesign the home page. The current home page was outdated and didn't reflect the true value proposition of Mendeley.
The aim of the project to reflect the true value proposition of Mendeley and reinforce trust within our users.
Before diving deep into the project, I built a plan and discussed further steps with the UX lead. Any change in the information architecture of the website was out of scope for this project.
Alongwith the UX lead, I designed the format of the initial workshop with the stakeholders to gather insights and understand the value proposition.
I analysed the existing website and documented the user flows. This highlighted some problem areas. Initially, the project was for all the landing pages on mendeley.com but later we scoped it down to the home page.
I analysed the home pages of some of the competitors such as EndNote, Zotero, Sciwheel, FlowCite, etc. Also analysed home pages of some popular websites, such as, Notion, EndNote, Atlassian, Shopify, Grammarly, Airtable, Dovetail. This helped me to understand how do various companies structure their home page, how do they commnicate their value proposition and how do they enhance the perception of trust.
I partnered with the data analytics colleague to find out the common user behaviour after the user lands on the home page. This helped us to design our initial design workshop with the stakeholders to define focus areas.
I facilitated a design session with the stakeholders from business, product, analytics, design and marketing teams. I also presented the findings of analysis of the existing flows, highlighted the problematic areas and shared the common user behaviour from the data analytics.
The goal of the workshop was to define the focus areas of mendeley.com and what story we want to tell to our users. The sessions also helped as conversation starters for conversion goals for the home page. We got major insights from our colleagues from marketing and analytics team which helped us to define the focus areas of the home page.
After the initial discussion with major key stakeholders, I began the design studios with the design team. With the value proposition in mind, we brainstormed ideas and came up with multiple concepts.
By incorporating the various ideas from the design ideation workshop and running competitor analysis earlier, I came up with different concepts for the home page.
Presented it to the design team and then to the stakeholders for feedback. The usability and accessibility drove our major decisions throughout the design process. Once the teams were happy with one concept and were onboarded with the designs, I started preparing for usability testing for these concepts.
In Mendeley, the process of moderated user research is very well-versed and robust. We have been doing it since ages and the process is very matured. But for the home page project, I wanted to try an approach that would give us a variety of the user feedback.
So, with a fellow user researcher, we proposed a hybrid approach of qualitative (moderated user sessions) and quantitative (unmoderated testing) user research which can be run in parallel.
At that time, Elsevier was in the process of testing various unmoderated user testing tools to finalise which tool they could buy. This also gave us a chance to contribute to the ongoing trials and we got free trial for an extended period. We used Ballpark to carry out the unmoderated user testing.
Whilst the moderated user testing sessions were taking place, I created an unmoderated user test using ballpark. The aim was to:
The unmoderated test comprised 5-second test, first click test and first impressions test. We got 20 responses from our experiment.
We ran these tests with 6 users. The objectives of the test were:
I prepared the scripts and coordinated with the UX researcher to schedule sessions. I partnered with the facilitator, prepared prototypes, signed up for note-taking and observations. We also invited our colleagues from the product and development team to attend these user sessions
We evaluated the results and then prepared a combined report which was shared with the wider team. I refined the designs by including recommendations highlighted from the usability testing. Ease of use and accessibility support were at the core of these designs.
Since this was a high impact project, we utilised the upcoming round of usability testing. After running it through our users, we noticed that our visual appeal ratings have improved. Now the content and image clarity is better as compared to the first iteration. We were happy with the results.
The final documentation was presented to the tech on Figma consisting of hi-fi designs, micro-interactions, responsive behaviour and accessibility.
Throughout the design process we adopted a collaborative approach and encouraged feedback from cross-functional teams.
The home page project has received huge positive feedback from various cross-functional teams and the testing participants. But there were some learnings too. We learnt that there was a scope to improve the quality of the user feedback from unmoderated tests. Although we got many responses from users but most of them were invalid. So, there were only 11-12 valid responses (which was a very low number than we expected). Also, we could have captured the responses for a longer period of time.
Also, for the moderated testing, we could have specifically targeted non-Mendeley users. But the recruitments were done way before, so we had pool of Mendeley users only. We thought that may have affected the ratings a bit.
For the next steps, we will be collaborating with the development team for the implementation of the home page. There are also conversations regarding capturing data through adobe analytics to set a benchmark for any future improvements and capturing our conversion data.