Women’s Health Research at Yale

Digital Strategist

At WHRY, I have analyzed objective and qualitative metrics for the center's website. Created research surveys to gather feedback on user’s ease of use and satisfaction interfacing on WHRY’s website. Analyzed survey responses and website analytics to examine high traffic web pages and determine the reason for certain pages outperforming others. Conducted user testing of the center's site and implemented changes based on all research findings. Collaborated with programmers to build out new components. Worked within the confines the CMS to create accessible, intuitive designs. Enhanced user experience by creating seamless navigation.

Manage the content and development of WHRY’s website. Use Google Analytics to identify trends and advance the centers communication plan, leading to a 45% increase of traffic to WHRY’s website. Ensure adherence to Yale University accessibility policies. Review trends in metrics to shape and inform future content development and find areas to streamline flow of information.

Lead visual design for all digital and print materials. Developed and produce concepts for video/photography. Explain scientific research through visual media. Developed and implemented a comprehensive, diversified Internet presence and social media strategy to advance WHRY’s mission, initiatives, and outreach to various audiences. Increased social media following by 29% and increased engagement by 162%. Provide technical assistance to all staff and council members. Plan, manage, host, record, and edit Zoom Webinars.

Skills Utilized

UX & UI Design
Social Media
Video Editing
Print Design
Google Analytics
Photography
Graphic Design
Marketing
Communications

User Experience Design

Using user research to guide my work, I have made several changes to the WHRY website including improvements to the about page, directors page, integrating a new button component on our news stories, improved SEO, merged pages for clarity and better user flow, and designed a new student blog. These changes have led to a 15% increase in users, 16% increase in sessions, 3% increase in page views, 61% increase in session duration, and 5% decrease in bounce rate.

I use google analytics to study the usage of our website, including where our users are coming from and which pages are most frequently visited. What I found tells us that our most frequently visited web pages are our about page, our director’s page, and our news stories. In response to this, I have been making changes to our website that support people learning more about us. For example, I have added more information on our about page, including a clearly stated, mission, vision, as well as adding our initiatives and history, which wasn't previously provided.

For our director’s page, I have added a video gallery that has multiple videos of Dr. Carolyn Mazure speaking about WHRY. This allows people to get a better sense of our leader and mission, directly from her, rather than just text.

For our news stories, I worked with Yale School of Medicine to build and integrate a responsive button component that allows users to be pointed to other pages, based on the content of our story. For example, our philanthropy columns will feature a button that links to our donations page. I have been measuring our bounce rates as well as our uses time on the page, and since integrating this component, our bounce rate has dropped 13% on news stories while the time on the page has increased 7%.

Additionally, WHRY had a student blog that was previously featured on the popular blogging site, Medium. While people were interacting with these posts via social media, the comment features were not being utilized on the blog. To combat this issue and direct more traffic to our website, rather than an external source, I designed a new student blog page hosted right on our site. All new blog posts are featured here, as well as an archive that provides links to the previous Medium posts.

Student Blog

Why Didn’t I Know This is WHRY’s student-led blog, previously featured on Medium. This year, I designed a new blog and moved it directly to our website. Each post is now branded with the author’s artistic style.
Why was this not on our site?

The original blog was hosted on Medium in hopes that people would comment and interact with the posts, but, they did not. People did, however, engage with this blog on social media.
A new home

Since the comment feature was not being utilized on the old student blog, I designed this new one on our site to drive traffic directly to us, rather than an external site.
History

The original about page said little about who we truly were and what we do. The page also gave no insight to the history of Women’s Health and why WHRY was founded. It was clear through analytics and viewing our user’s behavior that people were seeking more information on our History. To solve this issue, I built a new section on our About page that includes our History.
Initiatives

To add more clarity to who we are, I also built a section on our About page that features WHRY’s intitatives.
Sex & Gender

Sex and Gender are terms often used by WHRY, and many times, people confuse them for being interchangeable. While previously used as synonyms, this is no longer true in science. To clear up questions our readers may have about what we mean by these terms, and how they relate to our work, I built a reference guide which is now featured on our About page.
Changes to note

While I regularly update the WHRY site with minor changes on a daily basis, some of the biggest changes are featured above. The mobile device shows the Initiative section I built and hosted on our About page. The tablet shows the addition of our Vision section that I built. The desktop computer features the student blog I designed and built, and the laptop shows the top of our About page with its new, clearly stated Mission.

Want to know more about the UX work I’ve done at Yale?

View the case study

Social Media

A picture may say 1000 words, but what happens when you need to visualize 1000 words of scientific data and new findings? I am responsible for managing, maintaining, conceptualizing, designing, and writing creative posts for WHRY's forward-looking social media strategy. I work to inform multiple target audiences nationally, regionally, and globally, of complex interdisciplinary scientific information.

The Challenge

The main goal WHRY presented me with upon my onboarding was a need to increase communication between the center and our audiences.

The Process

In order to have a full understanding of where the center stood amongst other organizations at the university, as well as our competitors, I performed a full social media audit and identified the center’s strengths and weaknesses by analyzing metrics on Google Analytics and Hootsuite, as well as our individual social media platforms.

The Solution

After identifying problem areas, I developed and implemented a comprehensive, diversified Internet presence and social media strategy to advance WHRY’s mission, initiatives, and outreach. I instituted the usage of specific hashtags, tagging colleagues, sharing eye-catching graphics & photographs, as well as gaining new audiences through Instagram and LinkedIn, which the center had previously not been on.

The Outcome

Using the social media strategy I developed, I have increased WHRY’s following on social media by over 33% and increased engagement by 162%.