Hillel: Design Issues
Figure 1: old Home page
The biggest improvement for the site is to provide better and more organized content and make it clear who the content is for, to direct people quickly to what they need. For the Student persona, Hillel needed a site that was more visually engaging in general, and this could be leveraged to provide a better experience for the Parent and Donor personas as well.
Also, the site was not responsive, showing the exact same presentation on a phone as on a desktop, so the text was minuscule, and nothing could be engaged with without zooming in first.
Some selective design issues will be covered here. First, consider the home page. Right off the bat, it is unfortunate that Hillel could not figure out how to get rid of the DotNetNuke development bar at the very top.
Uninteresting data
Figure 2: old Community Menu
While Hillel provided a little slideshow on their home page, the images were years old. The same is true of the “Come to Hillel” video and the photo gallery at the bottom. There is nothing a study like this can do if the organization does not keep a site’s data timely to its users.
Instead of showing what is happening at Hillel, the home page is covered with Mission Statement text that may only help the Discover stage briefly. Anything else a Student might want has to be hunted for.
Unfortunately, even if they hunt, they don’t always find what they want, as determined by the student interviews. As an example, the “Community” menu (see Figure 2) links to four pages, but only the “Job Listings” was interesting to students. Students thought that professional and educational opportunities was one of the best things to find, so it is not advised to bury it in the sixth part of the navigation, and then third in the menu.
Information Architecture Issues
Figure 3: old single photo gallery
The home page also has some clickable pictures along the bottom, including the previously mentioned photo gallery. This gallery is monolithic, having pictures from several school years and a mix of events, all without text to tell you what you’re looking at. The interface to work the gallery also does not encourage exploration.
Looking again at the home page in Figure 1, next to the gallery are two seemingly interesting events. Unfortunately, these are not Student events, but Donor events. Each led to nothing but a registration form, even after the event had passed, yielding nothing at all for any prospective persona.
Now let’s take a look at the navigation.
Figure 4: old Navigation
Having “About” so soon in navigation does make sense here, given the Discover stages for all personas. Having “Israel” next seems to make sense, except that there are only a handful of engagement opportunities involving Israel and far more campus events. Having “Events” next would seem to rectify this, but just like the bottom of the home page, these are Donor events, not Student events. To see Student events, you would use the following “Calendar” link, and then you need to do a lot of reading and clicking to find upcoming events.
So the nav is primarily aimed at the following personas: All, All, Students, Donors, Students, Students, Students, Donors, All. There is nothing at all directed at Parents, and the Donor sections were split unexpectedly.
Visual style
Figure 5: old Job Listings
The site was very bland. Occasional photos, but mostly full black text on full white background.
Figure 5 shows the very desired Job Listings. The presentation does not help generate enthusiasm or aid in finding. Corresponding social media posts were far more engaging.
This style is seen on almost every page, with the exception of the Staff page which included pictures of people alongside long bios.
Figure 6: old calendar
Another example is the Calendar shown in Figure 6. While it is mostly functional, it has a look like Windows XP from the early 2000’s. It also suffers from a saturation of underlines and a lack of time information for an event, forcing a click.
Clicking gives a little more information, but again is just blandly informational and does not encourage attendance.
