https://online.qut.edu.au/
(New version to be live in Dec, 2024)
Role: UI Designer
Team: Collaborated with Harry Zhou and Molly Seeary
Overview:
As part of a collaborative team of three UI Designers, I contributed to the redesign of the QUT Online website. This project aimed to deliver a visually engaging and user-friendly platform tailored to the needs of prospective and current students. Leveraging UX research and iterative design processes, we created a design that was both functional and responsive.
💻 Key Contributions:
Design System Development: Designed and implemented a scalable design system in Figma, ensuring visual and functional consistency across all components.
Interactive Tools & Modular Features: Developed interactive modules allowing students to explore critical information—such as Eligibility Checker, Completion Forecast and Fee Calculator—directly addressing pain points identified through user research.
Prototyping in Figma: Built an interactive Figma prototype (Prototype Link) to demonstrate the design concepts, navigation flows, and interactivity, which allowed stakeholders to experience the redesigned interface firsthand.
User Testing: Conducted user testing sessions with the prototype to validate design decisions, uncover usability issues, and refine features based on real user feedback.
Responsive Design: Ensured the design was fully responsive, delivering a seamless experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement: Partnered with Harry and Molly to align on creative solutions and presented prototypes to stakeholders, incorporating their feedback in iterative design updates.
Outcome:
The redesigned QUT Online website achieved a modern, accessible, and user-centered interface. User testing confirmed the effectiveness of the interactive tools in meeting student needs, resulting in a design that enhances usability and supports the university’s commitment to delivering an exceptional online learning experience.
💡 Reflection & Lessons Learned
One of the key challenges we faced was the lack of an established design system at the beginning of the project. Without a unified framework, each designer initially approached the design in their own way, resulting in inconsistencies, particularly with CTA styles across the pages.
As the project progressed and more pages were built, it became clear that having multiple variations of CTAs was neither scalable nor efficient. To address this, we conducted a thorough review of all existing styles, narrowed them down to a cohesive set of final options, and incorporated these into a newly developed design system. This process involved:
Auditing existing designs to identify redundant or unnecessary styles.
Aligning as a team to decide on the most effective and versatile styles to retain.
Updating existing pages to replace inconsistent elements with the streamlined components from the design system.
This experience underscored the importance of establishing a robust design system early in the project. While the team successfully resolved the issue and delivered a cohesive final product, the additional effort required to retroactively update pages highlighted the inefficiency of designing without a unified system from the start.
What I Would Do Differently:
In future projects, I would prioritize creating a foundational design system before starting the page design process. This would ensure consistency, save time, and reduce rework, ultimately resulting in a more streamlined workflow and a more cohesive user experience from the outset.