USCIS Redesign
For this project, I aimed to create a more inclusive website that better guided its users through key site interactions.
The problem with USCIS is that it provides little sense of direction or any indication of what action should be taken next. Instead, it offers all of its available features to every visitor with disregard to their purpose for visiting.
The goals were defined as:
Create a direct and personalized experience
Revise site structure and flow
Lead users to specific pages which aligned with their goals
Reduce excess interactions
Identifying The Problem
My approach consisted of:
Interviewing previous applicants
Reading through online forums
Testing competitor sites
Before I got too far ahead of myself, I had to look at the hard data first. From the beginning I had access to one of the most important resources in research: real users.
Spending time with those users, one thing became immediately clear: they all felt as though the site was constantly fighting against them. Digging deeper, I discovered that users disliked how they were made to constantly traverse the website in search of information they needed or documents that they couldn’t find.
By the end of this phase I had a clear issue which I could address. The site's information architecture needed to be improved. There had to be a progressive flow of information which would take users through a series of logical steps to complete their goals.
Personas as a Lens
Once I have collected my baseline of information, I began to sculpt my personas. The goal here was not to create general characters that would represent the average applicant, instead I wanted to narrow the focus of this project by using the personas as a lens.
Going off of statistics that are publicly provided by the Department of Homeland Security, I identified three core locations that yield that highest number of immigrants to the U.S. each year. Of those three I ultimately decided that to make my primary persona European.
This was done to better understand the problem that I was trying to solve and afforded me several key traits in doing so. Had I made my primary persona to be Asian or Hispanic, I might have been sidetracked by the issue of multilingual accessibility, which is an issue that is also prevalent but not within the core focus of this redesign.
Through my user stories and flows, I found that I was dealing with a situation where I had to cater to various edge cases, as each persona’s goals varied wildly, imitating my findings from research. With this discovery, I decided that a top-down approach would best serve this website’s information architecture.
Sketching Wireframes
This is where the core of the redesign began to take shape. In my initial designs, I focused solely on the idea of tiering the information. As previously mentioned, instead of throwing the entirety of the website at our users, my intent is to provide a top-down approach of information presentation.
I found that applicants tended to fall into one of three categories: Existing users who wanted to login to their accounts and continue their application, new users who wanted to start a new application, and users that wanted to find out more information on what USCIS is and what services it provides.
In these sketches, I focused only on the first two groups of users in order to drive home the point of informational clarity. Now when a user arrives to the USCIS website, the limited number of options provide them with clear a starting point of action.
Interactive Mockups
But how does this all work in practice? Throughout testing, I found that users greatly preferred my proposed designs. When asked why, the answer always looped back to the clarity of the site.
The testers were given clear choices as to what they could do, which made their decision making process much easier. Additionally, by presenting them with actionable items that were related to their application process, they stated that they could better prioritize what items to work on in order to achieve their goals.
Lessons Learned
The product should help the user achieve their goal at every step of the way.
Information Architecture, when done right, goes a long way in providing clarity of information.
Aesthetics aren't always everything. Form will follow function.
Giving users a direction to go in ensures that their engagement is continued and meaningful. While it's ok to let them take the reigns from time-to-time, but always give them a path to their destination.