HBP My Lists

Research and Redesign

Harvard Business Publishing - My List and Personal Cart

A website that allows higher education professions a place to plan and purchase coursepacks and materials

Harvard Business Publishing wanted to redesign “Collections,” a repository for professors and educators to store their coursepacks and saved course materials. They wanted to update the visual design to match their recently designed Design System and bring a better experience to users.

Overview

Info

Role

User Experience Designer

Timeline

February 2022 - Present

Problem

The visual design of the “Collections” page was out dated and did not match the design system of the rest of the page. The experience was bulky and had been causing several issues for users that customer service was having to manage.

Outcome

I was able to research, gather insights, and create a design that was current in the design system as well as a better experience for users. This included designs for registered educations and Material Admins, as well as unregistered educators and individuals.

Old and New Designs

Research

After post stake-holder meetings and design challenges there were two prototype directions created.

We tested these with comparison testing on usertesting.com to:

Confirm a usability preference
Confirm chosen direction would not be confused with another section of the site – Coursepacks
Make sure that users had understanding of how to use “Collections”
Reconsider the name

Design A

Design B

Research Results

Out of 10 users – seven preferred design A and only three preferred design B.
- Out of the three who liked design B more – two users said it was because there was more information shown.
All users indicated they wanted to see more information than what was shown.
Sex users indicated they wanted to see the following information displayed on the collections page:
- Author
- Price
- Language
- Included Material
- Publication Date
- Four users added Discipline.
Users indicated that the collections page would be a great place for them to store their ideas, but they would want more information in case they forgot why they saved an item when they returned later.

My UX Recommendations:

Create a new design that encompasses both design A and B which would
- Give users more of an expected experience with the drop down arrows. (An expected experience for the user would be for them to click the drop down arrow and the container would expand and show them more information about their individual item.)
- Provide more information on individual items that the majority of users indicated they wanted to see.
- Possibly give users a space to create their own personal notes. (Post MVP)
After the new design was created, a round of usability testing on usertesting.com

New Design

The new design featured the same left navigation but included all the information that users had requested. I added a “product details” dropdown to keep the design clean but allow easy access to all the information.

The new design came with many new modal creations as well as search results page and mobile designs for all pages.

following the design, I was also on the renaming committee to help bring clarity to the user and business for this feature. We changed the name from “Collections” to “My list” making it feel more feature focused and personal to the user.

Retrospective

Reflection

Even though we had two design ideas, the users in our testing found a way to suggest combining the design. Being flexible with the new design and what we were bringing to the feature was needed.

What I learned

I learned how much I really love user research and validating design decisions. I love presenting those decisions and ideas out to stakeholders and I realized how much I like working with all sorts of people in the business who have creative ideas!