The user experience of research

Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences asked us to map the user experience of its website hr.nl/onderzoek. The goals of this website comprise:

• To let research knowledge flow back into the tuition.
• To provide knowledge for practicing professionals.
• To perform subsidized follow-up research.

• Investigation of user needs through interviews.
• Development of personas and customer journeys.
• Gain insights and suggest improvements.

The interviews showed that Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences produces lots of good quality, relevant content for users wanting to do research. However, these users don’t often find themselves on the university website. They’re using other sources when looking for research info.

It appears that the gap between the user group and the website can be bridged by introducing another type of user, who likes to share research content in his own social networks.

It turns out that both user types complement each other’s customer journey. That’s why we focused on these personas, Maris and Indre.

Together with the University’s communications advisers we explored two customer journeys in a workshop session.

• Indre wants to monitor the projects that she subsidizes and share them in her social network.
• Maris is looking for up-to-date knowledge and experts on the subject of youth welfare, to find research partners.

The workshop and interviews provided us with important insights:

• Users expect more focus on research than on tuition.
• Users search by subject and theme.
• Users want ‘smart’ search results that can be filtered.
• Users want easy navigation to related content.
• Users want to scan content rather than reading it.
• Users want to receive the content in their own social networks.

For each of these insights we provided ideas for improvement in an attractive visualization. Using this presentation, the communications advisers can create awareness at the university and, together with the IT department and web team, start optimizing the user experience of their users.