Austin History Center

Interaction Design, Visual Design, & Research

Duration: Jan 2024–Apr 2024, 14 weeks

Tools: Figjam, Figma, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Google Sheets.

The Brief

[Talk about what the project is]. Capstone course for my Associates in User Experience Design.

The Team

Nathaniel Chalk–UX Designer

Kristina Davis–Lead UX Designer

Ian Gardner–Researcher, Content Writer

Elizabeth Solis– Project Manager, Lead Researcher

AHC Team–Tatiana Gonzalez, Jennifer Hecker, Bryce Benton, Sarah Cronin, & Aaron Goldman

Us after our final stakeholder presentation with the AHC team. 2024.

Act 1: Project Overview

The Austin History Center (AHC) is a division of the Austin Public Library (APL) that offers a wealth of historical resources, such as documents, photographs, and host exhibits. It serves as a hub for discovering the rich history of the Austin region.

Client Goals

  • Their target demographic included both seasoned researchers and new users from the general Austin public with a focus on new users.

  • Simplify the process of finding the information and resources for users.

  • Encourage them to dive deeper into its content and features and encourage them to explore secondary pages.

  • Expand the user base by enhancing the accessibility to the different AHC resources to provide a welcoming environment for new users.

Photo by: Elizabeth Solis, 2024

Challenges & Approach

Asynchronous Collaboration

Due to the nature of our class, there was a lot of asynchronous work. Throughout the project, I learned the importance of keeping everyone on the team aligned, especially during the design stage.

Inherited Project

This project in particular was an inherited project from an information architecture class at UT. However, the sheer volume and low quality of the data made it overwhelming to sort through and make sense of it.

With those reasons in mind, we agreed to disregard it and move forward, focusing on our own user research. However, this data would come back into the later stages of the project.

Act 2: Research

User Interviews & Insights

With UT documentation off the table, our first step was to conduct 9 user interviews to identify key pain points and frequently used features.

Challenges: Unfortunately, I became very ill during this phase, which prevented me from conducting my assigned three interviews. Instead, I reviewed recordings of half our interviews and analyzed key insights.

Top Insights:

  • The home page was very sparse, and, as one user put it, “kind of boring.”

  • The navigation labels had industry-specific jargon, such as “reproductions,” which confused users and lead to longer search times.

  • Some users had difficulty finding the information on the secondary pages because it was hidden under the accordions. A couple of them use the CMD F function to search through pages with vast amounts of content and mentioned that they had to expand all the accordions individually in order for it to work.

On top of the pain points, we also gathered the top resources that users have expressed interest in. These included:

  • Newspapers

  • Periodicals

  • Photographs

  • Genealogy

  • Exhibits & Events

Mid-fis

As I recovered, I took initiative in creating the mid-fi layouts and prototypes.

 I took the information I learned from the user interviews as well as the low-fidelity wireframes my teammates laid out to polish them.

Usability Test #1

  • Figure out what the user-created exhibit would look like and hash out the details—like how many pieces are chosen.

  • And then expand on necessary screens, conduct user testing and iterating based on the results, and finally create the actual digital product.

Hi-fis (Mobile)

  • Figure out what the user-created exhibit would look like and hash out the details—like how many pieces are chosen.

  • And then expand on necessary screens, conduct user testing and iterating based on the results, and finally create the actual digital product.

Usability Test #2

  • Figure out what the user-created exhibit would look like and hash out the details—like how many pieces are chosen.

  • And then expand on necessary screens, conduct user testing and iterating based on the results, and finally create the actual digital product.

Final Design

In the end, my team and I had a design that

Final Design (All Screens)

To bring everything back together, here is the complete set of our screens across all the devices.

Next Steps

Perform further usability testing to ensure labeling and navigation are in line with accessibility guidelines for all users.

Takeaways

  • Communicating with my team was essential throughout the entire process. From bringing up our initial limitations of our project scope all the way to all the way to content discrepancies in the high-fidelity designs—while doing the majority of it asynchronously! I worked through my fears of speaking up to actively communicate and help resolve those challenges I and my team faced to effectively ensure our project's success. 

  • The biggest (and hardest!) lesson I took away from this project was maintaining the balance between not quitting and not working myself to exhaustion. This included being ok with asking for help, being kind to myself, and focusing instead on what I could do, instead of what I couldn’t.

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