"I like the style of the test and the video feedback. It does mean that you get a real flavour of the responses rather than just the edited analysis. A really professional job."
- Another happy Minervation customer!

The Oxford University Careers Service contacted us in the Summer of 2008 because they needed help with their web site. The site design was quite out of date and no longer met the needs of the end-users. Their content had also become quite unmanageable, housed as it was within a complex and unusable architecture.

We began, as we often do, by focusing on the audience; asking them what they thought of the current site and what they wanted from a new resource. We ran extensive hands-on usability testing with students, employers and staff and then wrote an evidence-based usability report that was supported by video clips of the tests. The report recommended a way forward; working with the Careers Service staff to build a user-friendly resource that better reflected the organisational brand.

For the first couple of months, we worked closely with the Careers Service team to develop a new information architecture and web design. Our usability findings fed into this process so that the site we started building in the Autumn reflected the extensive evidence-based user involvement.

The new site is a massive improvement on what came before:

• The design is clear, contemporary and consistent
• The architecture makes navigating easy and intuitive
• The end-users love it! (We tested it again pre-launch and the feedback was dramatically improved)

There is still a lot of work to do (updating content and integrating the site more closely with other in-house systems), but overall we're delighted with the end result.

You can visit the leading Careers Service web site at: http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk

Jonathan Black (the Director of the Careers Service) has now written a case study of the website redesign project.  This describes the whole process from his perspective and provides some useful insight into working with Minervation.