Work
About
Elsevier
Simplifying complex user flows for academic researchers
My role:
UX Research
Visual Design
UX Design
Duration:
12 weeks
Team members:
Design Lead
UX Researcher
Content Writer
Client:
Elsevier
Students
Academic Researchers
Health
Professionals
Elsevier is a leading company that provides global access to information and solutions to support the academic research community.
This project was part of a large-scale redesign of the website, with the intention of serving the needs of Elsevier’s target audiences - students and academic researchers
Problem
Elsevier provides different types of content and products that are spread on different websites. Due to its complexity, users have a skewed understanding of how the website can support them.
After working together with the client and UXR, I’ve mapped the different phases that academic researchers go through, during their research process. This helped me define the different user journeys to consider for the next steps.
To better understand Elsevier’s user base and further research their needs and behaviors, I looked through the website analytics and registered users.
Foundational research
User testing
To understand how users fulfill their needs and navigate through the old website, I’ve conducted with UXR user tests for the research, publish and disseminate phases.
User flows don't mimic user's search mental models
Products that helped researchers find peer-reviewed articles or manage their references weren’t reachable on the current user flows.
Gap between the language used by the business and users
Academic researchers didn’t identify themselves as “authors”, leading to confusion concerning the Author’s Hub
Solution
Resources
Stay up to date with your field
Search, discover and get alerts about the latest published research
8 items
Resources
Find funding for your research
Get tips to discovering funding opportunities and preparing your proposals
8 items
Resources
Getting published
Resources to guide you through publishing
12 items
Resources
Discover and manage research data
Tools and tips to help you discover and manage data sets and plans
9 items
Author service
Language editing
Help you improve your articles before submission
Policies
Open access licenses
Inform yourself about Open Access licensing
Guide
Track your influence
Quantify the reach and influence of your published research
About
Open access
For a collaborative, inclusive and transparent world of research
Journals
Journal-level metrics
Learn about citation-based metrics employed at the journal level
Product
JournalFinder
Find the journals that could be best suited
for publishing your research
Dynamic elements, over scrolling
Users were more engaged when they interacted with elements like carousels or anchor tabs, to support their navigation on pages with complex information.
Make it visual
Users reacted positively to simplified product illustrations or visuals to support explainer pages.
New information architecture
Providing quick access to critical user journeys, and organizing Elsevier’s content and products under the Researcher Hub, by research stage
Information
Architecture
Impact
+46%
Increase in user reach for resources and product landing pages for researchers
+32%
Increase in user engagement for resources and product landing pages for researchers
+25%
More articles submitted in the first 6 months compared with the previous year