Role
UX Researcher/Designer in a team of 6 for a senior capstone project in collaboration with Resistance Mapping's volunteer team
Task
Perform user testing on current site and create a site redesign to allow for future expansion to cover all of New York State
Skills
Technical Skills: Figma, Adobe Suite Products
UX Skills: User Testing, Qualtrics, Survey Design, User Interviews
Timeline
September 2024 - May 2025
Awards
2025 Digital Media Studies Community Engagement Award
Overview
What is Resistance Mapping?
Resistance Mapping is an educational project built to teach students about place-based racism in Rochester. The Resistance Mapping team is made up of local volunteers who create lessons plans and an interactive map showcase Rochester's history of racial discrimination and its impact.
The Problem
Resistance Mapping wants to expand
While Resistance Mapping's site was originally focused on Rochester's history, the team's expanded to cover housing discrimination across New York State. This rapid expansion led to a site that was hard to navigate and made future expansions hard to plan for.
Our Solution
Streamline the site to address user needs
Conduct user research to find current pain points for users and the Resistance Mapping team to create a high fidelity prototype for the site. Resistance Mapping can then use the prototype as a template for their site, and as a guide for future expansion.
User Research
To find out users' pain points for Resistance Mapping our team conducted multiple forms of research:
Stakeholder Interviews:
We interviewed the Resistance Mapping team to learn about their needs and plans for expansion. We also interviewed local teachers that used Resistance Mapping as a tool in their classrooms.
Tree Testing:
We used Qualitrics to find how efficiently new users could find resources on the site. We also used exit interviews to capture each user's experience and pain-points.
What we learned
Users struggled to easily find specific lessons due to confusion navigating the site. Multiple stakeholders expressed disappointment that the map was not as interactive as they expected.
Empathizing with our stakeholders
Using our findings, our team created an Affinity Map to better empathize with Resistance Mapping's users.
Affinity Mapping
Our affinity map helped us identify that users pain points primarily came from lack of accessibility, confusing navigation, and non-intuitive features.
Wireframing
Using our affinity map as a guide, we sketched wireframes that would address user needs.
Clarifying our needs
Wireframing left us with many possible directions for the redesign. To determine which option was most intuitive for users, we created paper prototypes for additional testing.
Paper Prototyping
We went through each combination of pages and assets with nine users with different levels of familiarity with Resistance Mapping to find which combination was easiest to navigate and use.
High Fidelity Prototyping
Refining Navigation
One consistent piece of feedback was that finding specific lessons through the Nav Bar was challenging. To simplify the process and allow for expansion, we combined lesson plans under a single drop down and created a mega menu to reduce clutter.
Original Nav Bar
Originally, Rochester lessons were separated from the rest, and the drop down menu was structured differently.
Updated Mega Menu
The new Mega Menu allows users to access all lesson plans from one drop down, making lessons easier to find and streamlining content across the site.
Refining the curriculum
We learned from the Resistance Mapping team that the curriculum was added without a standard template, and teachers using the site expressed difficulty finding specific lesson plans. To help both stakeholders, we created a landing page for the curriculum and a standard template for lessons.
Curriculum Landing Page
County-Lesson Template
Updating the map
Our user testing taught us that a major pain point for the map was users misidentifying the tool tip menu as a cookies pop-up. We also learned that users wanted to see multiple map layers at once, and wanted map's interactive location information to be clearer.
Original Map
Updated Map
The new Mega Menu allows users to access all lesson plans from one drop down, making lessons easier to find and streamlining content across the site.
My takeaways from Resistance Mapping
This project was the final culmination of the foundation of what I learned in college. It was a great opportunity to bring together much of my learning and showcase the tools I acquired.
User Testing
We conducted multiple forms of user testing, which is not always possible in school projects. I learned how to structure surveys and interview questions to get as much information as possible.
Prototyping
This project let me push my interactive prototyping skills on Figma. When making the map, I experimented with different ways to achieve the interactivity users expected from the site.
Community Engagement
This project let my team work with an organization doing great work for the Rochester Community. Our work with Resistance Mapping won the 2025 Digital Media Studies Community Engagement Award.