The Georgia Department of Labor website is where users can go to file for unemployment, view upcoming career fairs, receive information about their unemployment benefits, upload completed job applications, and many other things. The function of this website is essential for many Georgia residents and therefore must be easy to navigate and use. My team of 4 UX Designers (myself included) set out to redesign the website to make it more user friendly, intuitive, and less intimidating. Because of our time restraint for this project, we decided to focus on re-designing the homepage and the navigation menu. 

​

To begin the process, we created a Proto-Persona based on what we already knew about the potential users that would use this app, since we had a group member who had received unemployment before. We then wrote up a survey to find out what types of things other people need when using the website. We gathered 82 responses and got a lot of insightful, useful information. We also conducted one-on-one interviews with 5 more people to gain additional in-depth data. From this data, we were able to create a better-fit User Persona of the GA Dept of Labor's potential users.

​

Once we compiled all of the insights from our answers, we began organizing it into an Affinity Diagram based on similarities. This helped us visualize what was most important to people when using the website. From that information, we were able to do a Feature Prioritization Matrix and decide what aspects and which features were the most essential for us and for the users to have. This gave us a full-picture of the user needs and from that, we composed our Problem Statement, UX Hypothesis, and Value Proposition Statement. We also organized our Information Architecture and developed our User Journey Map for the typical user path through our website.

​

Then came the sketching and wireframing process. My three teammates and I all sketched mockups of what we envisioned our redesign to look like while following our user path. From those sketches, we took the buttons, positioning, and features that aligned with our data and worked well aesthetically and created wireframes. Once that was complete, we began user testing.

 

Through user testing our lo-fi prototype, we took those insights and developed our mid-fidelity prototype. Then we tested again, ideating and gathering more insights. We wanted our hi-fidelity clickable prototype to flow perfectly and be easy to use for everyone. Our A/B testing came next, where we tested whether it was more intuitive to have "Unemployment Benefits" or "File for Unemployment" os a menu option. More users found "Unemployment Benefits" more recognizable. This option included a drop-down menu where users could choose to file for unemployment or view current benefits. We created our Sitemap to give a detailed view of our navigation, header, and footer elements.

​

Overall, I feel like we were successful in our re-design of this government website as it is easier to use and puts the user's needs first, while maintaining the high level of information needed.