national cancer institute

re-skinning the national cancer institute

The National Cancer Institute recently underwent a complete overhaul of their website design, updating an extremely dated and difficult-to-use main interface. One major difficulty that NCI constantly faces is that they have a wide range of user groups, from medical doctors, to research fellows to cancer patients and the general public. I was asked to test this new skin with these groups to ensure that any major usability issues could be identified and corrected before the site launched. By examining how users interacted with functionality, navigation systems and various content pages, I was able to produce a set of recommendations to ensure that the site would perform well for each target user group. I uncovered major issues with the Spanish language toggle's functionality, some menu disorganization, and several confusing layouts of various pages, all of which were addressed prior to the site's launch. 

NCI's visuals online image database

NCI's Visuals Online image database did not undergo a substantial re-skinning at the same time as the rest of the website. When it came time to re-skin the database, I conducted user research on the new skin to help identify potential issues. The research was well-timed, as the database was able to be re-skinned significantly ahead of schedule to coincide with a spotlight article in the Washington Post. Testing revealed that participants were largely successful in being able to navigate and locate various pieces of information on the website; however, the testing revealed some minor issues prior to launch, such as a poorly located staff login link, confusion surrounding the purpose and functionality of the My Pictures feature, and a search algorithm that did not always match user expectations.

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