Research has shown that the non-academic aspects of student life play a huge role in attracting a prospective student, encouraging them to enroll, maintaining a satisfying experience while a student, and loyalty after graduation. The purpose of the Student Life section of the Kent State University website is to support students’ needs and desires outside of class. The Student Life and Campus Safety sections of the site are currently not well organized: a patchwork of links, images, and sections that could do a better job of meeting site visitors’ expectations.
Continue readingPosts by Paul Mirocha
User research: reading behavior on an online literary magazine
How do people read online vs on paper? A analysis of on online literary magazine with a goal of increasing engaged long-form reading through design improvements.
Continue readingCreate your pizza online: A usability study
Users expect a pizza ordering site to be convenient, fast, and easy to use. This makes improving usability a major competitive strategy for the business.
Continue readingMobile app strategy and user flows
Tumamoc Hill is a puzzle: a tiny piece of highly-protected wilderness surrounded by a growing city. Compared it to Central Park in New York, there would be only one path through it, the rest of it off limits, left as much as possible in it’s natural state–before Europeans colonized it.
Continue readingWeb content strategy analysis
The site (hub.currentbyge.com) is meant to be a content hub, a repository for informational articles about the switch to LED lighting. The goal is to promote Current as a thought leader in the field, and to create and track leads. A content hub can become the canonical place to find critical content on a particular topic all in one place. But, to achieve this, the content needs to be organized, structured, and have a consistent curated message.
Continue readingUsability presentation: how deeply do people understand the weather?
Everyone talks about the weather–Weather Underground does something about it. Wunderground.com a beautiful weather and climate site absolutely packed with information. The site can be a bit intimidating for a new visitor or someone who is not a weather geek. This usability study looks at the experience of these new users.
Continue readingInformation architecture for a small town library
Upper-Sandusky Public Library
Project metadata | |
---|---|
Project title | Design research for a small town public library |
Project summary | summary |
Company/client name | Public Library, Upper-Sandusky, Ohio / Kent State University |
Project dates/time frame | March-May 2017 |
Research | Interviews, literature review |
Deliverables | personas, sitemap, wireframes |
Tools used | Balsamiq, Tree-test & 1st-click test by Optimal Workshop |
I did this project in an Information Architecture class at Kent State University.
Project summary
Library sites are complex and small town libraries often don’t have to resources to hire professional designers. The Upper Sandusky Library site had become cluttered over time by the accumulation of new content without a strategy for organizing it. It was difficult for patrons to find information.
I analyzed the information structure of the current site and did a content inventory. Then I did a literature review of research on other library sites and interviewed several librarians. With this input, I designed a new site map, created personas, and tested the new navigation remotely with users. After revising the structure several times based on feedback, I created the wireframes shown in this report.

Information architecture: what do all these electronic gizmos do?
That’s one of the problems throughout the site: it takes a bit of work to find out what each thingamajig, gizmo, widget, or doohickey does.
Continue reading