University of California Health
A system of giants, redefined to be accessible for all.
“The sum is greater than the parts,” said the Executive Vice President. That message needed to be conveyed throughout the new website. We needed to create a digital presence to serve as an educational tool for all audiences and to grasp the extensive resources available from the system. The new website also had to be about access and inclusion. “We are California” became a prominent theme.
Project goals
- Compose messaging around innovation, inclusion, and public service through comprehensive UX writing.
- Create a systematic hub of resources for news, research, medical centers, and professional schools.
- Enforce UCH branding to provide a consistent experience across marketing and digital avenues.
The ChallengePromote the system
UCH is comprised of six academic health centers, 20 health professional schools, four children’s hospital campuses and a Global Health Institute. It also includes systemwide support services from the University of California Office of the President that improve the health and well-being of the University’s students, faculty and employees.
Centretek partnered with UCH to launch their inaugural website. As a team, we provided strategy, wireframes, design, and development
My role
I was heavily involved from the beginning, with attending kickoff meetings, drafting usability testing prompts, and collaborating with UX writers. There were numerous stakeholder interviews that spanned from gathering insight from health professional school leaders to diving into the vision with the Executive Vice President of UCH.
Target AudienceMeet the users
Name: Katrina
Age: 54
Occupation: Healthcare professional
Katrina is a healthcare professional at UC Irvine School of Medicine. She needs a website to find information about the other medical schools under the University of California Health umbrella.
Name: Michael
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Michael just graduated and is looking at the University of California system to further his career in nursing. He would use the website to review the degree programs each school offers.
Name: Juan
Age: 63
Occupation: Retired
Juan lives in California and was recently diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He would use this website to learn more about the comprehensive cancer centers as well as search for clinical trials.
ApproachDesign rooted in storytelling
UX design process
This project was unique from others. Typically we focus on large hospital system redesigns that are grounded in functionality, such as doctor directories and making appointments. For UCH, the content was the spotlight, to communicate resources, research initiatives, and provide access to all of the entities under this large umbrella.
I created various user flows, focusing on access to individual schools and access to engagement content, such as news, clinical trials, statistics. Our strategy was to tell a story and accurately convey UCH’s umbrella and breadth of reach.
In order to tell this story, we needed components that not only embraced their visual branding, but were functional in displaying all kinds of content. The navigation was bucketed into categories that comprised the system, with menus to link to individual landing pages. Yes, we were telling a story of the larger brand, but also providing access to learn more about each entity, whether a health professional school or a larger academic health center.
Insights
We conducted initial usability testing through Chalkmark during the visual design phase to identify any potential issues and provide opportunities for improvement before development. The testing prompts were centered around user journeys and if users were able to find key pages and resources on the site. Generally speaking, the usability testing was successful in part due to the intuitive navigation and engaging UX writing.
TakeawayDesign system for the win
The comprehensive component set was flexible to encompass all content and showcase branded imagery, iconography, and videos. Because we defined a design system, the site will be sustainable as content writers add new copy, sections, and pages in the future.
We also conducted a second phase of usability testing on the live site using Try My UI. The prompts were similar to the previous test, but in this scenario, users were able to click around to explore the full site. We found that users were interested in a Research landing page that explained its many branches. Since then, we have strengthened that section to include a new content strategy.
What did I learn?
A new saying (maybe it’ll catch on). How do you get to [University of] California Health? Consistency, consistency, consistency. A bit of classical music humor to brighten your day. Structured templates, reusable components, and a defined design system were crucial to achieve consistent branding, enforce project stability, and manage to launch in a quick timeline.