Project Intro

MW CTR-IN Grant Pipeline Interface

A web portal for prospective faculty in the Mountain West region interested in clinical and translational research seeking access to resources related to the MW CTR-IN grant including general grant information, funding opportunities, online resources, and support services available.

Primary Goal

The primary goal of this interface design is to make it simpler and easier for prospective investigators to fully understand all of the resources and assistance that CTR-IN can offer.

Target Audience

The target demographic is faculty from the Mountain West region interested in translational or clinical research and looking for more information about grant resources, support services, and funding opportunities that are available to them via the MW CTR-IN web site. The interface should make sense to faculty from all ranks and grant-writing experiences.

Primary Problem

Upon coming to the MW CTR-IN web site, prospective faculty candidates (target users) may not initially understand the overall grant process and all grant funding opportunities, resources, and support options available to them, and may find it difficult to quickly and easily find relevant information online.

Proposed Solution

The proposed solution is to design and implement an interactive, visual, at-a-glance overview of the CTR-IN grant pipeline with links to the most important and relevant (based upon target user needs) information and resources on the MW CTR-IN web site, and to share/send this link to prospective candidates once integrated onto the CTR-IN web site.

Initial Content

"Pipeline" Image Map

The initial content provided is an interactive image map using a pipeline metaphor.

Content Strategy

Content & Risk Levels

All proposed content strategies presented below utilize different content structures grouped by three general risk levels.

When considering different content structures and multiple organizational systems for information architecture, one helpful grouping strategy is to use a three-pronged approach based upon risk, exploring options ranging from the safest to the riskiest.

Content Language

Nomenclature Options

Low Risk/Safe	Medium Risk	High Risk
Introduction to CTR-IN CTR-IN Overview About CTR-IN	Welcome to CTR-IN What is CTR-IN?	CTR-IN? What is CTR-IN and why should I care? How do I know if I’m a good fit for CTR-IN? Am I eligible for CTR-IN?
Begin Get Started Talk to Someone	How to Get Started How do I get Started? Where do I begin? Who can I talk to?	Gosh, it’d be great to run this by someone with experience. Sounds good, what now? Sounds great, what’s next?
CTR-IN CTR-IN Grant CTR-IN Grant Process CTR-IN Grant Support & Resources	CTR-IN Grant Pipeline CTR-IN Support System	How does the CTR-IN grant work?
Apply for Funding	Get Funded	Need money? Apply for CTR-IN grant funding.
Learn More	Where can I learn more?	I wish I’d learn how to.. How do I....
Contact Us Contact Information	Get in Touch	Who can I talk with to learn more?
Prepare for Extramural Funding Achieve your goal of Sustainable Impactful Independent Extramurally Supported Research	Do Research that WIll Change Lives. Get Sustainable Extramural Funding to do Ongoing Research that will Impact Real People and Communities.	How do I best prepare for future NIH funding? Achieve your goal of NIH funded research. How do I best prepare for Extramural Funding?

Structure Maps

Structure maps are like over-simplified site maps, but for individual pages. They are useful tools for when trying to figure out the best overall organizational structures during the early planning stages.

Structure maps are not supposed to contain all of the content. Instead, they should communicate the general content structure and top-level hierarchy of information. They should be style independent, with no focus on the visual layout of the content. The focus of structure maps should be solely on content structure and organization.

Five Proposed Organizational Structure Options

Content Maps

Content maps are similar to structure maps, but with more content depth and detail. They are useful tools for when trying to figure out the best content organization structures during the early planning stages.

Just like wireframes, content maps are not supposed to dictate the layout or UI. Ideally, they should be style independent, with little or no focus on the visual layout of the interface. Instead, the focus of content maps should be on the detailed content structure, hierarchy, and user experience.

Five Proposed Content Map Options

Wireframes

Wireframes are similar to architect's blueprints. They are useful tools for when trying to figure out the best interface for users during the early planning stages.

Wireframes are not supposed to dictate the layout or UI. Ideally, they should be style independent, with little or no focus on the visual layout of the content, design patterns, and UI components. Instead, the focus of wireframes should be on the content structure, hierarchy, and user experience.

Five Proposed Wireframe Options

Downloadable UX PDF

Design Patterns

Design patterns are known solutions to common user experience and interface design problems.

When faced with multiple options for content organization and presentation, design patterns are part of an informed approach to interface design to help improve the overall user experience.

List of Design Patterns Considered

UI Mockups

User Interface Design (UI) Mockups are high quality visual representations of what the final product will look like.

UI Mockups are typically flat images that are non-interactive (they are typically not coded or clickable) designed to explore visual style options. The focus of UI mockups should be on the overall aethetic style, the visual layout of the content, color palette, typography, and the individual style decisions for all design patterns and UI components. The content structure, hierarchy, and overall user experience should match or closely resemble the previously drafted wireframes and include changes and modificaitons based upon previous decisions during the UX phase conversations and dialogue.

Three Proposed UI Mockup Options

Downloadable UI PDF

Prototypes

Prototypes are interactive drafts of the final product.

Prototypes are effective tools often times used early in the design process to pre-visualise the final product for testing purposes to get a snse of the overall user experience for the final product. They are especially helpful when testing the usability of different UI components and design patterns and when determining which technologies should be considered for product functionality.

Prototype #1

Source Code

Feedback

A Call for Feedback

In order to design the best possible interface for you, feedback is essential. To help make this process easier, I created a dedicated feedback page for you to post comments online, along with a short explanatory video that briefly explain the project.

Go to the Feedback Page

Notes

Recommendations

1. Change CTR-IN web site urls (permalinks) from their default setting (?=number) to a more semantic setting (page/post name).
   • Example:
     • Old: http://ctrin.unlv.edu/?page_id=186
     • New: http://ctrin.unlv.edu/biostats/
2. Consider a web site redesign with the following attributes:
   • Responsive Design
   • Integrated Portal Sites
   • Redesigned, Simplified, User-centered Home Page with Strong Typography
   • Redesigned header and footer with MW-CTR-IN logo

CTRIN web site redesign proposal

Below is a visual example of a proposed CTRIN web site redesign that is responsive for all screen sizes and dimensions, along with a new header and footer design highlighting the CTRIN logo:

Note: the above redesign is not included within the scope of the original proposal, but could easilly be developed if CTRIN is interested.

Precedents