Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University created The Forest of Rhetoric as a guide to classical and renaissance rhetoric. He intended it to help beginners and experts make sense of rhetoric because it’s a vast subject, while honoring the subject of rhetoric.
Before the redesign, Dr. Gideon Burton’s Forest of Rhetoric website used double-sided navigation bars. This outdated layout made it difficult for users to navigate. The dictionary-like design with rhetorical terms overwhelmed users with information, especially due to the narrow side bars. As a result, users experienced longer navigation times and missed seeing some pages.
The goal was to create a place where users can easily navigate efficiently in a short period of time, while getting a better understanding of rhetoric.
Before diving deeper into the design process, I needed to understand how long someone stays on a website for information. I focused on figuring out what makes a user stay or leave. I decided to conduct my own secondary research.
According to Forbes “Top Website Statistics 2024,” 61% of users say that if they don’t find what they’re looking for within about five seconds, they will go to another site. On average, users spend 54 seconds on a page, with about 6.44 seconds focused on the main navigation menu. Including videos can increase the time spent on a page by 88%, as they provide an interactive experience for users.
In contrast, when reading written content, website users spend an average of 5.59 seconds skimming the site. During this process, people tend to focus their attention on the left corner of the text and quickly breeze through the rest before moving on to the next line. The goal was to create a place where users can easily navigate efficiently in a short period of time, while getting a better understanding of rhetoric.
Here are some insights gathered from my research:
.png)
To gain a better understanding of informational websites, I analyzed three competitors and observed some of the features they offer their users. Wikipedia and National Geographic were two successful informational websites I studied. The third was YourDictionary, a popular search engine for vocabulary.
Wikipedia includes word links embedded in its written content, allowing users to navigate to another page that dives deeper into a topic.
Similar to Wikipedia, National Geographic presents written content in a magazine format. They use shorter paragraphs for improved digestibility, accompanied by photographs that complement the text.
YourDictionary features a clear and concise navigation bar, with the main component being the search bar.In contrast, when reading written content, website users spend an average of 5.59 seconds skimming the site. During this process, people tend to focus their attention on the left corner of the text and quickly breeze through the rest before moving on to the next line. The goal was to create a place where users can easily navigate efficiently in a short period of time, while getting a better understanding of rhetoric.
I conducted user interviews with participants who use informational websites daily. I reached out to those who responded and agreed to participate. I designed the interview questions to elicit detailed feedback on the website's usability, functionality, and overall user experience. With the collected data, I identified users’ needs and their current struggles when using The Forest of Rhetoric website.
I began by creating basic sketches of the desired layout structure for each page. I aimed to enable users to navigate quickly and easily using the navigation bar, enhanced by the addition of a search bar to guide them.
After finalizing the sketches, I transformed them into wireframes. In Figma, I created low-fidelity wireframes for the main pages. This structure allowed me to move on to creating the low-fidelity prototype, which provided valuable insight into the functionality of the current design.
I later conducted user testing on the high-fidelity mockups with the same participants in the persona interview for consistency. After gathering several insights from users, the following notes were made.
This application's purpose was to allow users to quickly navigate and better understand rhetoric. To ensure that the design doesn’t get in the way of the user’s goals, I created the website so that it was simple and modern. On average, the user time went down 70.5% when asked to do the same tasks on the new design.
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}