Re-imagining Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory's Site Experience and Navigation
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Overview
The Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory (PMEL) is a research institution focused on the Pacific Ocean and its interactions with the atmosphere. Their website is a primary center for higher education and public information about oceanography and environmental science. As the lead designer, I ran discovery sessions, gathered meaningful observations from user interviews, and created a refreshed web experience for their site.
Goal
“Represent PMEL as a leading research institution for higher education and public use.”
Impact
This was a research and design project that was handed off to PMEL developers to be released in 2024. My team identified issues through interviews and discovery, ultimately resolving each with the Product Owner’s approval.
The Problem
During discovery, we identified most of the problems through Card Sorting activities, Usability Interviews, and requirement gathering.
User-centered Navigation
Site Structure categorized by internal organization, not users mental grouping
Hidden Information
Research Lab Groups had pages hidden within their own unique navigation menu which replaced the main one.
People Needed Highlighting
Research was highlighted but not people. People pages were among the top visited. This is most likely because students reaching out to researchers to work with them or learn about a specific person’s research from meeting them.
Client Wanted a UI Refresh
While keeping in line with their parent org’s styling, NOAA/OAR’s, the client wanted the site to be a “mix of Museum of Science with the authority major research sites have”.
A refresh was in the making that focused on how users will view, navigate, and interact with PMEL.
Goals
We planned to refresh the experience and style of the site to match client expectations and bolster PMEL as a premier research laboratory. By highlighting researchers, reflecting a navigation system that users understand and that is simple, and designing a brand that is exciting and professional, we will have resolved the issues that we discovered with the site during the discovery phase.
Design Solutions
Highlighting Researchers and Their Publications
During discovery, we learned that users primarily visit the site to learn more about certain researchers and the work they are publishing. Sometimes they wanted to find contact information, too.
To support this, we pushed publications to be a main focus on the homepage, and made it much easier to access the information users were looking for.
Homepage links Publications, Publications link Researchers, Researchers link to their Publications.
Categorizing a Navigation Menu for Users
The navigation was created by employees as a as-needed basis and maintained by one person. We discovered that the site followed an internal organizational structure of the labs rather than how users categorize things. Labs were in their own dropdown, while their publications and some of their data visualizations were a separate tab. Instead, users categorize by topic. We also included quick links on the right that users frequently visit.
Designing a Brand that is Exciting and Professional
During the refresh of the site, we needed to bring the site with its parent organizations guidelines while giving the site its own flavor to make it distinct. We decided on taking inspiration from Science Museum, Science Journal sites. MIT’s site was also a big inspiration for presenting ourself as professional and strong.
Another key aspect was the need to minimize image importance and focus on content. While it would be nice to have large, captivating images, images were limited for PMEL since most would be of low image quality. This worked hand in hand, however, since we wanted to focus on researchers and their written works, articles, and news.
Reflection
My key takeaways were:
A strong project plan leads to a successful execution.
Working LEAN doesn’t mean UXR has to disappear!
The hardest part about this project was planning. The timeline went by quickly and I had other projects occurring in tandem. Making sure that meetings were productive, the right meetings were scheduled, and making sure requirement gathering and approvals happened swiftly took careful planning on myself and my team to successfully wrap this project up.
ethanwatsonj88@gmail.com