Background

MyQ, the current Quinnipiac University intranet, was launched back in 2006. Unfortunately, much of it — from the homepage, overall design and information architecture — has remained the same since 2006. With the launch of a new QU.edu external site on the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform in 2016, our team was tasked with redesigning and rebuilding a new MyQ on AEM.

I will mainly focus on the information architecture redesign and content strategy and development phases of this project in this case study.

Our Mission

Drastically improve the user experience of MyQ while maintaining key applications that users rely on every day.

How did we do it? Please read on, won’t you?

Research and Discovery

In addition to looking at intranet best practices within and outside of higher education, our team conducted the following exercises:

Initial Stakeholder Interviews

Under the guidance of a research consultant, we initially interviewed over 40 people in 15 sessions that spanned various administrative units at the university from our 9 individual schools, admissions and financial aid units, libraries, finance office, public safety, registrar's office, residential life, health services, etc. We asked stakeholders to describe their roles at the university and how MyQ played a part in their day-to-day duties; possible pain points, dislikes or likes with the current setup; what they would want to see out of a new, reimagined MyQ; and if applicable, what they could point to as success points or metrics in a new and improved MyQ experience (increased student retention, less reliance on emails, less phone calls asking for information, etc.)

Findings

• Content rot - departments have stopped keeping content up to date throughout the site because:

  • Current publishing processes are cumbersome

  • They had the belief no one was looking at it

• Search is broken and information is difficult to find

• As a result the site had become so untrusted that faculty and staff often created their own groups and forums on external platforms like Blackboard to post relevant information there

• "There is a lot of noise on MyQ. We stopped posting information and don't really see it as an effective way to reach people."

• "It looks like it's from the '90s. I never go on there."

• "I have faculty that tell me they go there as a last resort. For me, if I can't walk up and down the hallway and find someone to help me first, then I would go there [MyQ] and try. I only expect finding what I need 50% of the time."

Content Audit

For the content audit of the current site experience, I personally went through MyQ's main navigation and noted all pages that exist with descriptions. A deep dive on external tools/apps/quick links was not included as part of this exercise (Blackboard, WebAdvisor, etc.), but they were noted in the audit spreadsheet if they were linked to within the navigation.

My Top-Level Observations

• 600+ pages of content on MyQ

• 18% of navigation links lead user to external sites/tools (QU.edu, quonline.quinnipiac.edu, forms.quinnipiac.edu, etc.)

• Majority of MyQ content pages consist of overview text with a document library of uploaded attachments (PDFs, Word .docs, JPEGs)

• Many pages include outdated information, are "ghost pages" and have broken images and links

• 5 departments/offices have microsites within MyQ where the look, navigation and design are completely different from the majority of content pages

• Bloated information architecture

Content Concerns

• Unlike QU.edu, must rely on stakeholders from each office for content creation

• Must train many people from across the university in AEM - all with different levels of technological skill

  • Culture change: Will they want to be trained in a new system and be tasked with creating content and updating pages?

  • Platform and design of new intranet needs to be accessible and engaging enough to encourage people to want to update their pages

• Must develop new, updated information architecture

• Eliminate fragmentation - try to get the most content possible living on one platform with one cohesive design/identity

• Establish operation plan post-launch - Hire full-time intranet content manager, develop workflows, content guidelines, etc.

Survey

Our team posted a 10-question survey to MyQ which received 288 respondents from across the university (faculty/staff/students).

We found:

• 88.2% mainly use MyQ on their laptop, 9.8% on desktop

  • Current MyQ is not mobile friendly or responsive

• 83.7% of our respondents use MyQ daily

Main Problems

1) Navigation and IA is not user-focused

• Navigation is institution-centric

• Certain terms have made their way into the main navigation that aren’t clear to new users

• Second level of the navigation has become so overpopulated with pages that it feels overwhelming

2) Much of the existing content is outdated

• Current publishing process is difficult

• Some offices do not have the extra resources to put toward intranet content development

• Faculty and staff have sought out other ways to communicate and post content through third party platforms and applications

3) Search often returns no results

4) Design is dated

• Hasn’t received a makeover since its launch in 2006

• Site is not mobile-friendly

• Does not reflect the energy of the university

Benefits to a New and Improved MyQ

A modern, user-friendly university intranet has the power to:

1) Build a sense of community by fostering connections between students, faculty and staff across schools and administrative offices

• There’s a lot of great things going on at Quinnipiac all of the time, let’s facilitate the ability to better share stories internally and avoid the “I had no idea that was happening here…” problem

• Establish easier methods of communication between faculty, students and staff and not overly rely on email

2) Make everyone’s day-to-day lives easier

• Users save time and frustration by being able to quickly access the information they’re looking for

• Teams and offices can be more productive now that they’re not wasting time getting lost in a digital dumping ground

• Increase self-service and reduce incoming call and email volume for offices and departments

3) Increase student retention and reduce the attrition rate - happy students stay at the university

• Making new student onboarding an easy and engaging experience lowers the stress and anxiety of being in a brand new environment

• Increasing ease of access to important information early on in their college experience can help lighten an overwhelming workload

Information Architecture and Navigation Reorganization

Based on existing user credentials, our team knew we could customize the navigation by our three main user types: students, faculty and staff. Armed with our content audit spreadsheet, an existing sitemap, and analytics that told us what applications had the highest usage by audience, we drafted up an initial IA that consisted of the following main content buckets: "Learn," "Live," "Play/Experience," “Work,” and "Support/Services." We conducted a content sort by mapping pages and themes under the new categories and ended up with a rough initial IA framework:

We continued to interview stakeholders from across the university to get their feedback on the existing site experience, and get their opinion on where we were headed. As more information came in, we revised and expanded the proposed new IA by user type. Major improvements included:

• Adding the “Teach” main content category to our faculty site experience

  • Many professors told us that they viewed their day-to-day teaching duties separately from “Work”

  • The “Teach” category would potentially house links to the Blackboard LMS, faculty research resources and opportunities, academic policies, etc.

  • A separate “Work” category would house HR-related benefits information, training opportunities, and finance-related forms and resources

• We kept the “Live” category specifically to the student population as faculty/staff technically don’t “live” at Quinnipiac

  • This content bucket would house student services information such as housing, health and wellness, parking, dining and public safety

• Students would receive the “Play” category while Faculty/Staff would receive the “Experience” category

  • Our team felt “Experience” was too big of a category for the student population as it could contain all student service and student life content (both “Live” and “Play”), from housing to “get involved” opportunities like student clubs, events, and fraternity and sorority life

  • “Experience” for the Faculty/Staff population would house content that included university events, fitness classes, on-campus dining information and athletics events

• Adding a “Discover” main category, which would eventually become “Connect,” for all users

  • We understood some users felt comfortable navigating by the institution and didn’t want to abandon the construct entirely, so we offered a bit of a safety net by creating a category that would house simple landing pages for all schools, main offices/departments, and centers/institutes, with a brief overview, main contact info (phone, email), and links to relevant third party applications

• Adding the “Explore” category for all users

  • We addressed the need to physically orient oneself at the university by providing a category that would potentially house interactive campus maps and virtual tours

While we were refining the site structure, we mapped user tasks to each main category. A small sample of a Student audience task mapping looked like this:

• Learn

  • Check course schedule

  • Check course grades

  • Access materials on Blackboard

  • Schedule a tutor

• Live

  • View on-campus dining menus

  • Report an issue with room or dorm

  • Find shuttle services/schedules

  • Ship a package

  • Print out a visitor pass

• Play

  • Find on-campus events

  • Explore available clubs

  • Find fitness center schedule

  • Reserve a space for an event

• Work

  • Find an internship

  • Find on-campus employment

  • Connect with career development

  • Get help with my resume

Our user task mapping exercises led to the following improvements:

• We evolved “Support/Services” to “Get Help”

  • Rather than exist as one large main content category that could potentially house disparate sets of services, we decided to clearly telegraph “help” resources by mapping them to each main category and including a “Get Help” presence throughout the site

    • For example, “Get Help” services under “Learn” might involve scheduling a session with the Learning Commons, while “Get Help” services under “Live” might involve scheduling a counseling session with a mental health professional

  • “Get Help” would also exist as a category in the utility navigation and feature high-traffic requests like resetting a password or submitting an IT request

• We created a “Finances” category and included it in the utility navigation

  • This was another category that was so big it warranted special treatment - “Finances” for faculty/staff would include accessing prior pay stubs or tax documents, while “Finances” for students might include financial aid information or paying a tuition/course bill

• We included the top user tasks for each audience under an “I want to…” category in search

  • Using action-oriented and task-based language throughout the site would become a mandate: “Register for classes” instead of “Self-Service”

• We included the top used applications for each audience under a Quick Links menu in the utility navigation

Once we felt comfortable with our new-and-improved IA, the design and development team at R2i was able to bring the navigation system to life:

Content Development and Build

One does not build an entire intranet in a vacuum. Our team had the goal of building out the main landing pages of the website with enough representative content per user group (faculty, staff and students) so we could launch a beta version of the new MyQ and solicit feedback from users who agreed to participate. I met with key offices across the university in content workshop sessions where we assessed their current presence on the site, what content we could keep, what content we could sunset, and new content that would have to be developed.

We aimed to feature contact information prominently, use task-oriented language instead of institution-oriented language, and keep any overview copy clear and concise. An example of one of the main landing pages is this “Play” page for our student audience group:

Beta Launch and Results

Our team held informational roadshows and launched a beta version of the new MyQ in Fall 2018 to widely positive feedback from across the university community. The plan was to implement a partially decentralized publishing model, get members of the university responsible for creating and posting content trained in AEM, and continue the website build while keeping the current iteration of MyQ live. We would also look to establish a governance panel consisting of faculty and staff to implement intranet policies and usage guidelines.

Shortly after we launched the beta of the new MyQ, the project came to a halt. The decision was made to focus our team’s attention to the redesign of the external Quinnipiac website. The work completed to date, including the information architecture redesign and general content strategy, will be invaluable when the redesign of MyQ is eventually revisited.