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Live Project

ASU Writing Guide

Web App Design

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Overview
Overview

The ASU Writing Guide transforms the writing process into a seamless journey. With interactive navigation, and structured guidance, writers can confidently tackle any assignment, from brainstorming to final edits.

Designed for students and professionals alike, this intuitive tool ensures that support is always just a click away. With intuitive navigation and interactivity, it ensures that users can quickly find the right guidance at any stage of their writing journey.

Design Timeline

The ASU Writing Guide had helpful content, but it was difficult to navigate and less engaging.

Students struggled to:

  • Locate citation tools and writing examples

  • Stay oriented within multi-step writing processes

  • Engage with static, text-heavy pages

Heuristic evaluation and user testing revealed:

  • Overwhelming menus and poor information hierarchy

  • Lack of interactivity or workflow support

  • Design Goal: Turn the guide into a structured, interactive workspace that supports real writing behaviors (nonlinear, multi-project, step-by-step).

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Unique Features
Figma Board
High Fidelity Screens
Testing & Iterating

To validate our design direction, we conducted two rounds of usability testing with ASU students from a range of majors. Participants were asked to complete common writing tasks, such as preparing a lab report, citing a YouTube video, or outlining a scholarship essay, using the new guide interface.

What we observed:

  • 60% users overlooked key interactive tools due to limited visual emphasis

  • A few features lacked intuitive cues, making it unclear how to track progress or complete tasks

  • Expectations around smart interactions (like predictive search) occasionally led to confusion

What we refined:

  • Introduced onboarding cues and iconography to improve feature discoverability

  • Simplified progress indicators with clearer labels and microinteractions

  • Enhanced layout and spacing to guide attention toward core tools

By the final round of testing, students were completing tasks more efficiently, navigating with confidence, and expressing stronger intent to reuse the guide. What had started as a static academic site was now being experienced as a structured, interactive writing companion.

Impact
Key Takeaways
Reflection
This project has been a valuable experience for me, as I’ve had the chance to apply my UX design skills to something that could really help students in their academic journey. Focusing on the needs of students working on writing assignments, I designed features like the project board and progress tracker to make the writing process more manageable. Even though the project is still in development, it’s been rewarding to see how these features are shaping up to help users stay organized, track their progress, and access helpful resources as they work through their assignments.

While reflecting on the development process, I’ve learned a lot about the importance of creating a tool that is both functional and easy to navigate. I’m excited about the potential of this project to support students, and I’m eager to continue refining the app to make it even more personalized and user-friendly. It’s clear to me that designing with empathy is crucial, and I look forward to seeing how the tool evolves as I continue working on it. The more I work on it, the more I feel this app can make a real difference in how students approach and succeed in their research writing.
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