The Client: Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired is undergoing a complete revamp of their web presence. The stakeholders needed to be convinced that a new site architecture and navigation layout will be worth the disruption caused by the overhaul.

The Ask: Show Improvements via User Personas

Seven unique user personas were developed to demonstrate how a new architecture and new navigational structure would improve user experience, even for those users who were repeat visitors and had learned certain (inefficient) pathways to achieve their goals.

Doug’s Role in the Project

As the content strategist, I was hired to remap the current website into something more user friendly, with clear paths to information. I used user personas to help stakeholders understand the cost-benefit analysis for our diverse user base.

Step One: Define Audiences and Goals

We used three tiers of audience, with the site’s revision primarily targeting 2nd Tier Audience visitors.

  • 1st Tier Audience: Provide a logical content hierarchy so visitors can navigate to the information they’re looking for without relying on personal memory, bookmarks, or a search function.
  • 2nd Tier Audience: Provide visitors with an intuitive content model that encourages exploration and provides clear entry and exit points, an easily understood journey map and breadcrumbs, and suggestive next steps.
  • 3rd Tier Audience: Provide visitors with a clear path to general information about visual impairment.

Step Two: Visitor Types

Orthogonal to Audience Tiers, three main Visitor Types were defined, each with several subtypes.

  • Professional TVIs (teachers of the visually impaired)
    • TVIs in Texas (1st Tier)
    • TVIs around the world (3rd Tier)
  • Families of visually impaired children in Texas
    • current students (1st Tier)
    • families looking for networking and community (2nd Tier)
  • General Public
    • Legislators & Policy Makers (3rd Tier, but very important!)
    • Donors and Community Partners (1st and 2nd Tier)

Step Three: User Persona & Journey Example Cards

Alice

Alice is a Texas State Legislator looking for facts and figures about “blind kids” in Texas, the resources provided to “blind kids” by the state, and the number of potential “blind kids” in her district. Alice’s only knowledge of visual impairment comes from watching Little House On The Prairie when she was a child.

Alice arrives at tsbvi.edu via a search engine request for “texas school for the blind budget services”. Her journey after landing should be: “About Us” > “School Data” > [download PDF] > (optional: “Facts about VI”) > exit

Bailey

Bailey lives in the Rosedale neighborhood of Austin and is interested in applying for a job at TSBVI so he can walk to work. He wants to know what kind of work is available, and also learn more about what we do here.

Ciara

Ciara is the guardian of a visually impaired 12-year-old who doesn’t believe her child is getting what they need from Woodlands ISD and wants to know what TSBVI might offer.

D’Andre

D’Andre is an O&M Specialist who just moved from Fawcett City to Dallas. He’s looking for information on the certification process in Texas and also wants to develop his professional network by attending local and state-wide professional gatherings.

… and so on and so forth.