Digital Design and Usability Mastery Reflection Blog:
March 30, 2025
This month, we explored Digital Design and Usability for our case study brands. I was thrilled to learn how to create a better user experience for our customers and enhance the overarching website features. Learn about my experience in this course and how I can apply my lessons to achieve my overall goals and become successful as a marketing professional.
In week one, I learned much about the basis of usability and how Fouronetwo's homepage could be enhanced. My key takeaways include creating a concise homepage that makes sense to the audience. As Krug titles his book "Don't Make Me Think" (Krug, 2009). This is a vital lesson to companies as the audience has a short attention span. If they have to think too much about what the website is or what the company does, they could leave your site or not understand the brand. I appreciated this week as I could apply much of what I learned to my website to make it more user-friendly for my users.
Week two was such an important week as we got to test out the website's usability with actual people. In short, we created a task scenario list for the website and then asked people to conduct tests based on our created scenarios. The lesson I learned from this week was that conducting tests with actual users is a great way to receive real-time results. With results in real-time, companies can see where the audience has issues within the website and discover their strengths. These results are crucial to the overall success of any change to the website.
Week three was all about navigation within the website and identifying areas of the website that might need improvement. I learned so much about Fouronetwo's flaws in their website this week. What was extremely interesting was the small yet big navigation functions within Fouronetwo that made a difference to the overall user experience. I learned that if words are similar in meaning but seem different at first glance, it could confuse the audience. Making clear and concise navigation features for the audience is key to a successful website.
In week four, our final week, we tied all the pieces from weeks 1-3 to create a final website plan for our case study websites. Week four taught me that there are so many solutions out there to help enhance usability in areas of a website that enhances. It could be areas that you wouldn't even expect. For example, I was unaware that Fouronetwo's website is not user-friendly for all people with specific disabilities. This week showed me that enhancements can always be made.
This month was incredible, and I truly loved recommending changes to Fouronetwo's website and implementing some usability techniques to my website. Usability is an essential aspect of a website and determines success in certain aspects of the business, like simply being able to find the website. Before this month, I didn't realize how in-depth design and usability went, but after completing this course, I understand the importance. I cannot wait to enhance my knowledge of digital design and usability. Thanks for reading.
Krug, S. (2009). Don’t Make Me Think. Pearson Education.
