iLIT is a university-based initiative focused on creating a more inclusive pipeline into law and technology careers. With a focus on multiple human rights justice initiatives, iLIT aims to shift technology fields from positions of exclusion and narrow vision to multidimensional, diverse, and equitable spaces. Their website serves as a critical resource for students, professors, and legal professionals.
My role wasn’t just about identifying pain points, but also working alongside the founder and team, who genuinely cares about reaching and serving her students, particularly those with less access to traditional pathways. Their concern was centered on how to better engage these students, and my contributions helped address this need while improving overall usability.
My initial goal was to understand the needs and frustrations of the law students and the institute's sponsors and partners who use the website. Because the original site was pretty bare-bones both design and content-wise, and had a confusing navigation, I assumed the bulk of the insights would center around this. I was right, but the additional insights that I ended up unearthing were so much more impactful than I could have imagined.
Lack of User-Centered Design – The site was built without direct input from the users it aimed to serve.
Complex University Constraints – Any changes had to align with Temple University’s predefined branding, style, and IT infrastructure. The communications team was involved to ensure that content updates adhered to the university's voice and tone guidelines.
Content Gaps & Navigation Issues – Users had difficulty finding relevant information and engaging with resources.
Multiple Audiences with Different Needs – The site needed to serve students, professors, legal professionals, and external partners.
The iLIT team now has a content-rich and easy to navigate website for their students and partners, a set of actionable recommendations and guidelines to keep the site user-centered and aligned with their mission to engage students, professors, and legal professionals, and a greater understanding of how they can reach their students and give them what they really need in order to pursue legal careers centered on social justice with iLIT.
The main outcomes of addressing these challenges were:
✅ Improved Site Navigation: The new navigation system made it easier for students, professors, and legal professionals to find the resources they needed.
✅ Enhanced Accessibility: With improvements made in line with WCAG guidelines, the website became more inclusive, particularly for students with disabilities or those from underserved backgrounds
.✅ Better Content Discovery: Career resources were now more easily accessible for students, while professors and professionals had clearer calls to action to get involved with iLIT’s initiatives.
✅ Sustainable UX Strategy: The team had a long-term plan for keeping the site user-centered, with content and design guidelines in place for future updates.
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Findings: Students were struggling to understand what iLIT actually does or can do for them as law students, were extremely worried about graduating and finding work, and finding work in social justice while still making a living wage. All of these issues were affecting engagement with iLIT's digital presence as well as the institute itself. iLIT does an incrediblle amount to provide resources, training, and opportunities for students who want to pursue social justice careers, so the root of these issues became clear; the visibility of iLIT's programs and impact were't being represneted on the webstie or digital presence.
Another surprising angle that appeared was from the users who were professors: it was clear many of them wanted a clearer path on how to participate in iLIT’s programming and how to access or contribute to materials. This shone a light on some beneficial partnerships between other departments in the law school and iLIT. The website’s information architecture, content, and navigation also needed improving, as users couldn’t easily locate the content they needed and would get turned around in their journey around the site.
As for partners and sponsors of the institute, there was a clear need for differentiation between content meant for students, professors, and partners.
The new design focused on clearer pathways for students to access career resources, while also ensuring that sponsors, professors and legal professionals could quickly find information relative to them instead of information more relevant to the students. The content organization now supported the main tasks of each user type, reducing friction and confusion.
Besides the actual re-designs to the website, including content, navigation. and usability edits, I left them with:
A detailed UX report and roadmap for ongoing improvements: I provided a detailed report outlining the improvements made, along with recommendations for further improvements. I pulled out so many useful insights that did not fit within the scope of my project, but was too valuable to throw away; these ranged from suggestions to improve how the institute engages with the law students to improvements to the law school's approach to student involvment and communtiy as a whole.
Design guidelines: A set of guidelines for content and design to ensure consistency with the new UX direction, as well as detailed video trainings for the team and future tech fellows on how to use the wordpress and the tools that I set up without independantly.
Information Architecture (IA) Overhaul: Based on research, I restructured the site’s menus, navigation, and layout to prioritize the most important content for students, professors, and legal professionals.
Content Templates & Style Guides: These were created to ensure content updates aligned with the new UX strategy, improving long-term consistency.
Engagement & Content Strategy: I worked on improving the discoverability of career pathways and made the site’s content more engaging for students, while also ensuring that professors and legal professionals had clear calls to action for engagement.
This was one of my favorite projects, because it really helped me recognize the power of presence in interviews; not just asking the right questions, but being attuned to the subtle moments when something deeper is about to surface. There were times when I would notice a shift in a participant, like they were deciding whether to share something more personal or meaningful, working out whether I would care or understand. The glimmer in their expression that would clue me into a spark of insight, or a deeply held frustration or passion. And when I leaned in, showed that I was genuinely listening and curious, those moments turned into some of the most powerful insights of the entire project. It reminded me how much trust plays into good research, and how being an empathetic listener can open up entirely new and valuable directions.
Feel free to reach out for an in-depth walkthrough of the deliverables
