OSTC

The first task was to complete a detailed audit of the main OSTC website. This revealed a number of pitfalls including hidden pages that were indexed, but not easily navigable from the menu, as well as a lack of signposting and menu highlighting. I also focused on removing unnecessary and repetitive content, and improving the hierarchy of the remaining content so that information was presented more concisely and the layout was easy to scan visually. The IA was reviewed and revised based on information about OSTC’s users and the result helped to establish a distinction between the different product offerings as well as creating a clearer and more intuitive framework.

‍

As part of the research phase, I conducted a competitor analysis, which included the review of out-of-sector organisations with equally complicated structures to see how they had managed to present their sub-brands. Following this, sketches and wireframes were created to demonstrate the proposed experience improvements to OSTC, focusing on the display of the business context and product offering landscape. After approval, I created these as responsive UI designs and prototypes before going to production.

‍

All of the implemented changes were proven, through experience measurement technologies, to show an increase in user engagement and subsequently I was asked to do further design enhancements on the site. This included revising the colour palette to meet accessibility standards, creating new adaptive type scales, and overall design improvements – all of which was stress tested across existing pages. I was also asked to design another website from the OSTC portfolio for their education offering, which included the ZISHI brands. This redesign was again proven to have a measurable positive impact – with reduced bounce rates, and increased visitor session length.