Digital Scholarship
Digital Scholarship is a department of the University of Rochester Library that offers web hosting services to students, faculty, and staff through the a platform called Digital Scholar.
Task
Conduct interviews with current and potential Digital Scholar users
Role
UX Design Intern working with a UX designer and mapping specialist
Skills
Technical Skills: Figma, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Forms
UX Skills: User Interview, Survey Writing, Iterative Designing, Affinity Mapping, Persona Writing
Timeline
June 2025 - August 2025
Digital Scholarship
Digital Scholarship is a department of the University of Rochester Library that offers web hosting services to students, faculty, and staff through the a platform called Digital Scholar.
Task
Conduct interviews with current and potential Digital Scholar users
Role
UX Design Intern working with a UX designer and mapping specialist
Skills
Technical Skills: Figma, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Forms
UX Skills: User Interview, Survey Writing, Iterative Designing, Affinity Mapping, Persona Writing
Timeline
June 2025 - August 2025
The Problem
The Problem
The Solution
The Solution
U of R students, faculty, and staff aren't familiar with Digital Scholarship, what it offers, or how to use its services
Overhaul the Digital Scholar platform to be more approachable and informative for new users.
Getting Started
Getting Started
I started the process of redesigning the the Digital Scholar site by familiarizing myself with what was currently available, and experimenting with the web hosting features. I used this opportunity to look at the system back-end to understand Digital Scholar's active users.
Competitive Analysis Matrix
The Digital Scholar site is managed by Reclaim Hosting, who provides web hosting services to universities across the country. To understand what I could do to the Digital Scholar site, I explored other universities' Reclaim hosted sites to see what content they included. While reviewing, I compiled an in depth competitive analysis matrix to present to my managers to start a conversation on how we should approach the redesign.
Looking through the list of current active users, it became clear that Digital Scholar was mainly being used by faculty that were hosting long-term research projects. Very few students used Digital Scholar unless it was incorporated into a class.
In looking at the ways other schools promoted and presented their Reclaim Hosting services, it became clear which universities saw high rates of student use. These schools generally had customized landing pages that explained what services they could provide, promoted successful student projects, and provided links to get in contact.
Initial Takeaways
Active Users
Learning about Reclaim Hosting
Gathering Data
Gathering Data
With a better understanding of Reclaim Hosting, I met with my team to decide how we could get more data from current and potential users to start improvements. We decided on two data collection methods to reach the broadest audience.
Experienced Faculty
User Interviews
Potential Faculty
User Interviews
Student Survey
As faculty were the most common Digital Scholar users, we wanted to conduct interviews with them to get a better understanding of how they used our services and their experience with it. Our team made a list of the most frequent users and I reached out to them to conduct 45-min interviews.
We also wanted to reach out to faculty members with projects that could be a good fit for Digital Scholar, but hadn't used the platform. We used these interviews to learn more about the current perception of the department and what was preventing faculty from reaching out to create a site.
Students were the primary demographic we wanted to target for new users. Since we were looking to hear from a wide range of students, we created a survey to send out. Our survey goals were to determine how many students were familiar with Digital Scholar, how many had actually used the services, and their experience with it.
One of the biggest things we learned from the interviews was that most faculty members had students use Digital Scholar to create the site or database for them. After the site was created, they tended to feel comfortable maintaining it themselves, but were worried about breaking something.
In looking at the ways other schools promoted and presented their Reclaim Hosting services, it became clear which universities saw high rates of student use. These schools generally had customized landing pages that explained what services they could provide, promoted successful student projects, and provided links to get in contact.
We were able to collect 80+ responses from students. Most responses showed that students weren't aware of Digital Scholar services but could find substantial use for them. Of the students that had used Digital Scholar, most reported being confused by the set up process, but having a positive experience once their accounts were active.
Findings
Experienced Faculty
Experienced Faculty
Learning about Reclaim Hosting
To start my redesign of Digital Scholar's site, I wanted to plan what pages would be featured, and how they could be structured to best serve users' needs. I took into account how other Reclaim Hosting sites were organized using what I learned from the competitive analysis matrix, and focused on highlighting content with each persona in mind.
Information Architecture
Affinity Map
To understand the main points discussed during my faculty interviews, I created an affinity map and personas to identify Digital Scholar's primary users and their needs.
Looking Closer at the Findings
Looking Closer at the Findings
To get a better understanding of faculty experiences with Digital Scholar, I created personas to represent the common traits I encountered.
Personas
Applying the Findings
Applying the Findings
Wireframes
After establishing the information architecture, I started working on the wireframes for each page. I was able to combine pages that were too similar, which would simplify users' experience on the site.
Landing Page
FAQ
Best Practices
Workflows
Wireframes
With my wireframes complete, I met with my team to review my work. I got feedback on how to clean up spacing and design details that I was able to apply to the final prototype.
High Fidelity Prototype
Reflection
Reflection
User Interviews
This project gave me the opportunity to interview Larabee clients to learn more about how they use the video features. I learned how to ask deeper questions to learn what the users' key problems are, and get ideas on how to improve them.
Analyzing
Findings
Since I focused heavily on data collection, I had a lot to analyze. It took me longer than I thought to make the affinity map, but the process taught me the importance of looking closer at my data to find the categories that naturally appear.
Presentation
Skills
As part of my internship, I had to present my work to dozens of UR library staff multiple times. As a typically nervous presenter, this experience taught me how to speak confidently, showcase what I created, and explain how I did it.
After establishing the information architecture, I started working on the wireframes for each page. I was able to combine pages that were too similar, which would simplify users' experience on the site.
Digital Scholarship
Digital Scholarship is a department of the University of Rochester Library that offers web hosting services to students, faculty, and staff through the a platform called Digital Scholar.
Task
Conduct interviews with current and potential Digital Scholar users
Role
UX Design Intern working with a UX designer and mapping specialist
Skills Used
Technical Skills: Figma, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Forms
UX Skills: User Interview, Survey Writing, Iterative Designing, Affinity Mapping, Persona Writing
Timeline
June 2025- August 2025
The Problem
U of R students, faculty, and staff aren't familiar with Digital Scholarship, what it offers, or how to use its services.
The Solution
Overhaul the Digital Scholar platform to be more approachable and informative for new users.
Getting Started
I started the process of redesigning the the Digital Scholar site by familiarizing myself with what was currently available, and experimenting with the web hosting features. I used this opportunity to look at the system back-end to understand Digital Scholar's active users.
Competitive Analysis Matrix
The Digital Scholar site is managed by Reclaim Hosting, who provides web hosting services to universities across the country. To understand what I could do to the Digital Scholar site, I explored other universities' Reclaim hosted sites to see what content they included. While reviewing, I compiled an in depth competitive analysis matrix to present to my managers to start a conversation on how we should approach the redesign.
Initial Takeaways
Active Users
Looking through the list of current active users, it became clear that Digital Scholar was mainly being used by faculty that were hosting long-term research projects. Very few students used Digital Scholar unless it was incorporated into a class.
Learning about Reclaim Hosting
In looking at the ways other schools promoted and presented their Reclaim Hosting services, it became clear which universities saw high rates of student use. These schools generally had customized landing pages that explained what services they could provide, promoted successful student projects, and provided links to get in contact.
Gathering Data
With a better understanding of Reclaim Hosting, I met with my team to decide how we could get more data from current and potential users to start improvements. We decided on two data collection methods to reach the broadest audience.
Experienced Faculty User Interviews
As faculty were the most common Digital Scholar users, we wanted to conduct interviews with them to get a better understanding of how they used our services and their experience with it. Our team made a list of the most frequent users and I reached out to them to conduct 45-min interviews.
Potential Faculty User Interviews
We also wanted to reach out to faculty members with projects that could be a good fit for Digital Scholar, but hadn't used the platform. We used these interviews to learn more about the current perception of the department and what was preventing faculty from reaching out to create a site.
Student Survey
Students were the primary demographic we wanted to target for new users. Since we were looking to hear from a wide range of students, we created a survey to send out. Our survey goals were to determine how many students were familiar with Digital Scholar, how many had actually used the services, and their experience with it.
Findings
Experienced Faculty
One of the biggest things we learned from the interviews was that most faculty members had students use Digital Scholar to create the site or database for them. After the site was created, they tended to feel comfortable maintaining it themselves, but were worried about breaking something.
Inexperienced Faculty
When talking with faculty that could benefit from Digital Scholar, we learned that many of them had been paying for similar services out of pocket. The most common reason they hadn't used Digital Scholar was because they weren't aware it existed, weren't sure how to get in contact to create an account, or didn't feel confident in their abilities to create a website.
Student Survey
We were able to collect 80+ responses from students. Most responses showed that students weren't aware of Digital Scholar services but could find substantial use for them. Of the students that had used Digital Scholar, most reported being confused by the set up process, but having a positive experience once their accounts were active.
Looking Closer at the Findings
To understand the main points discussed during my faculty interviews, I created an affinity map and personas to identify Digital Scholar's primary users and their needs.
Affinity Map
Personas
To get a better understanding of faculty experiences with Digital Scholar, I created personas to represent the common traits I encountered.
Applying the Findings
Information Architecture
To start my redesign of Digital Scholar's site, I wanted to plan what pages would be featured, and how they could be structured to best serve users' needs. I took into account how other Reclaim Hosting sites were organized using what I learned from the competitive analysis matrix, and focused on highlighting content with each persona in mind.
Wireframes
After establishing the information architecture, I started working on the wireframes for each page. I was able to combine pages that were too similar, which would simplify users' experience on the site.
Landing Page
FAQ
Best Practices
Workflows
High Fidelity Prototype
With my wireframes complete, I met with my team to review my work. I got feedback on how to clean up spacing and design details that I was able to apply to the final prototype.
Project Reflection
User Interviews
This project was the first time I was able to conduct in-depth user interviews. While I was nervous at first, I quickly gained confidence in my interviewing skills and got great advice on how to ask probing questions to find user needs.
Analyzing Findings
Since I focused heavily on data collection, I had a lot to analyze. It took me longer than I thought to make the affinity map, but the process taught me the importance of looking closer at my data to find the categories that naturally appear.
Presentation Skills
As part of my internship, I had to present my work to dozens of UR library staff multiple times. As a typically nervous presenter, this experience taught me how to speak confidently, showcase what I created, and explain how I did it.