NSCC Mayfield Library Visual Interface Mockup

Designer Name

Maryellen Nash

Client

Nashville State Community College Mayfield Library

Site Goals

Information Architecture

Client Name: Nashville State Community College Mayfield Library

URL: nscc.edu/library

Site Hierarchy

Research Help

Tutoring Information

Instructor Resources

About the library

Audience Personas

Audience personas are informed by the demographic profile of the student body of Nashville State Community College:

Headcount: 5870

Gender:

Enrollment Status

Age

Race/Ethnicity

Socioeconomic Profile

Nashville State Community College. (2016, May 2). Data and Statistics (https://www.nscc.edu/) [Text/html]. Nashville State Community College; Nashville State Community College. https://www.nscc.edu/about-nscc/institutional-research/statistics

Persona 1

Jessica:

Jessica is an African-American female, aged 24. Jessica is studying nursing and is the first person in her family to attend college. She is highly motivated to do well. However, keeping her grades up is a constant challenge because Jessica also has a full time job and a young child. She has family members to help look after her son, and she takes classes in the evenings after work, but she sometime finds the workload and stress of her obligations overwhelming. Jessica is a frequent user of the college library where she can find free tutoring, and helpful staff who help to connect her with the resources she needs for her class work,including copies of her course text books, saving her hundreds of dollars every semester. It is important to Jessica that she be able to find the services and resources she needs quickly and with minimum effort because time is always an issue for her. Equally important is that she be able access support resources (library research resources, online help and tutoring) from any location with internet access since it can sometimes be difficult for her to make trips to campus when she's not there for classes

Persona 2

Derek:

Derek is a 45 year old man with a wife and teenage daughter who is working on a career change. For 20 years, Derek has worked as a retail associate at two different "big box" stores. Having never earned a college degree, he found that his upward mobility at both stores was limited to department manager. Combined with the limitations, Derek was burned out at his job and had been thinking about a change for a while. Drawing upon his life-long love of cooking, Derek responded to a local advertisement he saw regarding the Culinary Arts program at Nashville State Community College. Since Derek's wife earns a steady income and their daughter is now largely independent, Derek decided to take the plunge. He was gratified to discover that the culinary program at NSCC was an open-enrollment one, so he opted to start classes in the fall. Derek has been able to work in the classes around his current work schedule, but it leaves very little time for leisure. What's more, he hasn't been in school in over twenty years, and lots of things have changed! He is unsure of his ability to succeed and needs a wide range of student support services to make him feel like he can do well. He does not consider himself very tech-savvy, and will also require help navigating the online course environment and the tools used to complete assignments. Because of his lack of online experience and demanding schedule, Derek requires a very high level of usability and utility in the online interfaces he uses. While his culinary courses do not require a lot of research, his core general education courses sometimes do, and Derek is very concerned that he won't be able to complete some of the research assignments required in his English, Business, and Communications courses.

Current Site Analysis

The current website for the NSCC Library is not as well organized as it could be. The interface is uncomplicated but limited. Because the library serves many student needs and offers a wide variety of resources and services, the current layout does not provide users with a full picture of what is available. To find out about support services, equipment checkout and student events, the user is forced to navigate several layers deep into the site, or scroll repeatedly down the page to view additional library information. The current site also does not make good use of the available screen real estate. The header image is very large, which forces much of the content further down the page. In addition, large parts of the sides of screen are unused so that the content is concentrated in a narrow column in the middle of the page. There are no standarized navigational links, and the overall look and feel has much room for improvement.

Color Scheme

Nashville State employs two color palettes: Primary and secondary. The primary color palette has three official colors: Teal, Gray and White. These are the dominant colors ued for all digital and print materials.


The secondary color palette compliments and supports the primary palette. While these colors are not intended as recognizable brand identifiers, they can be used in conjunction with the primary colors as an accent.


Site Branding Identity

This site redesign must adhere to the Nashville State Community College Brand Guidelines as set forth in 2022

Font styles

Nashville State has two primary font families: ITC Garamond and Oswald. Garamond can be used for almost anything from headings to body copy. If Garamond is not available, Times New Roman is an acceptable alternative.

Oswald may be used for titles, headings, sub-headings or pull-quotes. This font is not to be used for body copy.

Robato may be used as an alternative font type if needed. Roboto can be used in place of ITC Garamond for headings, sub-headings or body copy.

Logos

The Nashville State Community College logo should be prominant on all materials produced by the college. The logo may only be used in three color options: Teal (#005F61), black (#000000), or white (#FFFFFF) on a teal background:

Style Guidelines

Due to the requirements set forth in the NSCC branding guide, the redesigned website will adhere to the color palettes outlined therein. Every page will include the standard NSCC header (see below), but underneath that will be a newly designed library header image with standardized navigational links that will appear on every page.

Current NSCC header image:

Proposed NSCC Library Header image:

The general goal of the newly redesigned page will be to present the user with a clearly organized home page that does not require a lot of scrolling to see commonly-used and important links and information. The tone of the writing will be casual and informative, without unnecessary words. All descriptions will be short and to-the-point. Every page in the site will maintain the proposed new library header with the NSCC library logo an active link that takes the user to the homepage.

The hompage will be set apart from the other pages by virtue of simplicity. The homepage will contain the institutional and library headers with the multipurpose search box underneath. Beneath that, a line of icons corresponding to the most frequently used services and resources will be presented.

Secondary pages will be simple information pages designed to relate resource links, policies, and other information to users. These pages will contain the standard heades at the top but will maintain a white body color with black text.

Page Mockups

Homepage

Secondary Page Example