University of Manchester, FSE

A globally ranked faculty was losing strong postgraduate applicants to an overloaded, hard-to-navigate site, where only 28.6% of people could finish the core 'how to apply' task. I ran the discovery and research end to end, then turned mixed data and competing stakeholder views into one direction the faculty endorsed: a clearer content structure, a new way to navigate the site, and a tested wireframe prototype they could build.

The work positioned a globally ranked faculty to compete harder for the best applicants by making the experience itself almost invisible.

For a globally ranked faculty, postgraduate recruitment is fiercely competitive. The website had to help prospective researchers understand degree types, find live projects, identify supervisors, make sense of funding and understand how to apply, then turn that into a submitted application.

The live experience worked against those goals. A single long landing page held most of the content, priority tasks were hard to find, the language was dense and jargon-heavy, and users routinely dropped out of the faculty site into the wider university network with no clear way back.

The risk was commercial as much as experiential: lost applications, weaker standing against competing Russell Group institutions, and a digital experience that did not match the quality of the research on offer.

I led the UX thinking across the engagement and was responsible for turning a broad ambition into a structured, evidence-led programme and a deliverable direction. Working alongside data and strategy specialists, my role included:

• Framing the challenge and aligning it to commercial goals
• Designing the research and discovery programme
• Running a heuristic evaluation of the existing experience
• Planning and facilitating a full-day workshop with 12 subject-matter stakeholders
• Developing five evidence-based personas
• Designing and analysing the usability study
• Synthesising every source into user flows, 152 user stories and a customer journey map
• Turning the evidence into a sitemap, content architecture and wireframe prototype
• Presenting the rationale and recommendations to senior stakeholders

The direction was built on a deliberately broad evidence base, triangulating existing data, new research and behavioural insight:

• The faculty's own focus-group and postgraduate insight reports
• Quantitative GA4 behavioural analysis
• Secondary research on postgraduate demographics and motivations
• A competitor review of five comparable Russell Group faculties
• A heuristic evaluation of the current experience
• A usability study with 16 participants across five core tasks
• A full-day stakeholder workshop

The evidence converged on a consistent story. The information existed, but the way it was structured and delivered was costing the faculty applications. Key findings included:

45.85%

Heuristic score for the existing experience, signalling significant barriers

28.6%

Of users could complete the core 'how to apply' task

5.1/7

Overall satisfaction, an average that masked deeper task-level failures

• The postgraduate landing page drew over 600,000 views a month but held attention for only around 49 seconds, despite carrying most of the key content.
• Navigational clarity and information architecture were the most urgent weaknesses in the heuristic evaluation.
• Understanding how to apply was the worst-performing task; users defaulted to an 'Apply now' button that bypassed the process entirely.
• Dense, jargon-heavy content led users to skim, miss critical detail and feel overwhelmed.
• Users frequently left the faculty site into the wider university network and could not find their way back.
• Funding was findable but poorly understood; no participant left able to explain their options with confidence.
• The middling satisfaction score was an average that masked the task-level failures only the screen recordings revealed.

I translated the findings into a clear direction that respected the constraints of the university's templated system. The recommendations focused on structure, clarity and journey:

The faculty was handed a tested wireframe prototype and a complete set of recommendations, with the evidence for what to build and why. They endorsed the direction, and quick-win fixes were flagged to act on straight away.

The work moved the faculty from a rough, contested understanding of its users to a clear plan it could act on. The impact included:

• A shared, stakeholder-endorsed challenge statement and set of priorities
• A content architecture and sitemap built from 152 user stories and five personas
• A desktop wireframe prototype demonstrating the recommended journey
• Quick-win heuristic fixes handed to the team before final delivery
• A defensible, commercially framed case for change

What I would do next

If continuing the work, I would validate the proposed architecture with prospective students before build, then put measurement in place to prove the change. Some of what we aligned on was ambitious for the platform: the redesigned navigation, which stakeholders all agreed was better, went beyond what the university's current templated website could support, so it stays an aim to work towards over time rather than a day-one change. I would also push for the wider structural issues the project deliberately scoped out.

• Test the new navigation and priority journeys with representative prospective students
• Track application starts, completion and drop-off against the previous journey
• Commission a content audit and pattern library for the wider university network
• Bring key third-party services in-house for a more consistent experience