Berkeley Electronic Press
SelectedWorks™ is a popular scholarly paper publishing platform for researchers and institution libraries world-wide to showcase their work and contributions.
The beginning
The original site needed to be modernized inside and out. The author's profile didn't do justice on showcasing the author's works and contributions.
Original Author's Work Details
Modernization
Begin by defining the overall structure of the product.
Author's profile - Showcasing works and contributions
In the original site, the author's profile had a two column layout, where works takes 2/3 of the width and the author information took up the rest. In this new layout, I proposed a tab structure - making the works tab the primary - to ensure the highlight is on author's work, making the author's information a secondary information. We also wanted to support different types of works that authors could potentially upload and not just limited to PDFs but also support videos and images.
Works Details page
In the original site, there was not a way to showcase an author's work if it was of media type. So in addition to the continued support of the articles, we decided that we should support the showcasing of works that are type of media as well. In the wireframe, we thought of the carousel idea so that users can scroll through all of the author's work, but that was later scratched in the mockup phase due to scability and performance concerns.
Homepage Reworked
Last but not least, the homepage needed a revamp, the original lacked one primary action, appeared too busy, there were no weight for the users to land their eyes on. In the wireframe, I proposed a primary action to encourage users to sign up for a free account. Working with the sales team, however, we decided it was best for us to discourage free account, but encourage paid accounts by providing a contact form which directly puts the users in touch with the sales team.
