PROJECT OVERVIEW
The WPLC website is a professional development resource for women in medicine, but poor navigation and disorganized content created barriers.
I redesigned the site to simplify the navigation, highlight events and resources, and create a stronger information architecture, turning a 68.9% task success rate into a seamless (zero frustration) experience.
Role
Product designer / Solo project
Timeline
12 weeks / Spring 2025
Context
Academic project informed by my professional experience at HonorHealth.
Tools
Figma, Zoom, Google Forms
PROBLEM
The WPLC website is supposed to help women physicians find resources, events, and community. But it wasn’t working. After talking with members and visitors, three big problems stood out:
Menus, labels, and page hierarchy were confusing.
Joining, contacting, or signing up for events was buried.
Resources were scattered across PDFs and pages.
The question
solution
To address the chaos that frustrated 100% of users, I did a complete navigation overhaul, including:
Simplified main nav: Home, About Us, Resources, Events, Get Involved
Breadcrumbs for orientation
Search box in header and working logo link to home
Impact: Enabled users to find information in seconds instead of minutes by aligning with mental models and UX conventions.
Clear join and contact functionality
WHERE I STARTED
I started by combining four research methods to fully understand the scope of usability issues:
The accessibility audit identified 57 issues across 14 pages.
The site partially met Level A standards but didn’t comply with Level AA requirements.
The primary issues included missing or inadequate alt text, inconsistent heading structure, and missing warnings for PDF links that open in new windows.
I analyzed the site against Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics using Nielsen’s Severity Scale. This helped me catch the more obvious early and it gave me a helpful checklist to start.
From my surveys and interviews, I found common themes and grouped them together. This led to the creation of four personas, which helped prioritize features and guide design decisions based on my research:
Dr. Vancouver: Research-oriented physician
Hannah: Medical student
Kylie: Marketing professional
Dean: Communications professional
average task time
longest task time
Ease of use
60% rated “Difficult”
20% rated “Very Difficult”
Common feedback
Confusing
Unorganized
Messy
Outdated
Time-consuming
Likelihood to return
80% unlikely to return without improvements
IMPACT
If moved beyond concept, here’s how I’d approach next steps:
Short-term (0–3 months): Implement redesign, conduct post-launch usability testing, and set up analytics.
Medium-term (3–6 months): A/B test navigation labels and resource organization. Conduct mobile-specific usability testing.
Long-term (6–12 months): Establish ongoing content audit process, explore member login, and consider personalization by user role.
If I could go back, I would include more testing with physician users and incorporate card sorting exercises to better understand their mental models. That said, the think-aloud protocol and mixed-methods approach gave me comprehensive insights to design with confidence.
