University of Michigan Law School

We started our journey with the University of Michigan Law School on an extensive research project gathering input from stakeholders and site users, developing personas and user journeys, and providing a roadmap for a new site development.

Developing a roadmap

There was general agreement that the site needed updating. But, the Law School needed to get an idea of how it should be done. Who should the site focus on? How should it be designed? What should its objectives be?

We were hired to carry out a review of the current site, its competitors’ sites and to analyse the Law School’s website audiences and their requirements.

We carried our research in the form of:

• Website expert review
• Analytics review
• Competitor websites review
• Technical architecture review
• Stakeholder interviews
• User interviews
• User survey
• Content audit

One of the main elements of any website redevelopment project discovery phase is the identification of different user types and their requirements.

However, there is a danger that a lot of work goes into the research, a dense report is created, and that report ends up in a drawer soon forgotten.

Another option is to create graphical representations of users and their requirements as personas and user journeys.

We think personas and user journeys are great for a number of reasons, but we believe their biggest benefit is bringing potentially dry or overwhelming data into a format that teams can and will use over the long term.

Ongoing development

We are currently providing support for the Law School’s main site which includes an in-depth program of updates, and the development of a platform to host the Law School’s Journal websites.

The Drupal website connects with multiple internal systems that feed people, event, news, course, areas of interest, and department data into the site.

A recent project has included the integration of stories from the Headscape designed built Quadrangle website, into the main site.