Making this reading comprehension platform easier to use for its 17 million users
ReadWorks strives to improve the reading comprehension levels for K-12 students across the U.S. However, their homepage does not appeal to all of its users. That is why I led the design efforts to revamp the homepage in order to properly engage the audience. In addition to the homepage, I led the redesign of various features across the web app. These included, a revamp of the analytics page to make the data more clear and understandable to teachers, a rearrangement of buttons, text, and styles to make important information stick out and keep it easily accessible, and to create a new homepage for users once they have created an account and logged into the page. All of these changes proved to decrease the amount of help tickets received and helped to make the website more effective.
For the various projects I worked on at ReadWorks, I started my process by talking to other ReadWorks employees and users to determine what the pain points were and what the users' goals are. After understanding who the users are, I created a set of personas to illustrate the various needs of each person and how they use (or want to be able to use) ReadWorks. These personas helped to identify which ideas would not be useful for the users and which ideas could be molded to fit the need of the wide range of users. I would also research the old designs for the homepage to understand why that design failed to make it live on the site.
After completing my initial research, I would analyze the current designs to identify areas that could, or have been noted to, create confusion or frustration. I would then ideate and wireframe different solutions that could alleviate those frustrations. These options were then shown to users, developers, and other ReadWorks employees to understand how the design could meet the needs of the educators, students, the business, and donors. For the case of the homepage, I created many versions of my design to find the best way to show people that this product can be useful to them, whether they are a parent, tutor, or educator. I also needed to make sure people knew exactly what ReadWorks offered, so that donors would feel comfortable contributing to our organization.
After creating various wireframes and prototypes, I would test out my designs on employees and users. I would identify when users would get confused or lost on the page, so I could improve the clarity and intuitiveness of that specific area. This testing allowed me to find features that needed to be added, removed, or improved for the usability of the site. In other projects, I would also be in charge of developing the code for the specific feature that I had pitched.
You can view some of the modifications I made throughout the website here.