ASU Case Study | Brian J Kinsley Consulting

A structured heuristic evaluation of Arizona State University's campus maps, parking, and visitor pages, identifying navigation clarity failures and delivering recommendations that were implemented at a 95% rate.

Client: Arizona State University

Engagement: 40-Hour Usability Audit

Employer: Verint

Year: Winter 2023

Method: Heuristic Evaluation

Problem · Implication · Recommendation

The case for this audit, in three frames

Before scoping the evaluation, I structured the business case using a PIR framework, clarifying not just what was wrong, but why it mattered and what action it justified.

Navigation signals were failing visitors

Visitors to the Maps, Locations, Parking, and Contact sections encountered inconsistent navigation highlighting, hard-to-find breadcrumbs, and link labels that didn't clearly communicate where they would land.

Disorientation slows tasks and erodes trust

Unclear navigation cues force visitors into trial-and-error behavior. Cognitive load increases, task completion slows, and visitors begin to doubt whether they're on the right page, often abandoning the task entirely.

A targeted audit of the highest-friction path

Conduct a structured usability audit of the pre-visit journey pages to surface navigation clarity failures, labeling inconsistencies, and interaction design gaps, with concrete, prioritized recommendations.

Project Background

High-traffic pages with a critical job to do

ASU.edu serves a large and diverse audience, students, faculty, visitors, and prospective applicants. Within this ecosystem, the Maps, Locations, Parking, and Contact sections carry a specific and high-stakes responsibility: helping visitors navigate to and around the physical campus before they arrive.

These pages function as informational hubs. Visitors rely on them to locate parking, understand campus geography, and find contact pathways when they're stuck. When these hubs fail to communicate clearly, the impact isn't just a poor digital experience, it's a visitor who arrives confused, late, or not at all.

The client team requested this engagement to understand exactly where these sections were falling short and to receive recommendations the team could act on within existing platform constraints.

My Role

End-to-end ownership of the evaluation

I led the full audit independently, from initial scoping through final delivery, within a fixed-hour consulting engagement. This required analytical rigor, clear prioritization of findings, translation of technical observations into client-ready language, and facilitation of a productive stakeholder session.

Conducted heuristic usability evaluation across key navigation and informational sections of ASU.edu
Analyzed page structure, navigation cues, labeling conventions, and link behavior across multiple content pathways
Identified usability issues affecting orientation, navigation clarity, and information discoverability
Documented findings and developed actionable recommendations to improve navigation signals and interaction design
Prepared a structured presentation deck with annotated examples and prioritized recommendations
Delivered findings through a live stakeholder presentation and written usability report

79 - Content and navigation heuristics applied across pages in scope

6 - Distinct usability findings, each with layered recommendations

5 - Page types evaluated: maps, parking, locations, contact, and internal linking

99% - Implementation rate, nearly every recommendation was acted on

Methodology

A structured process with a clear evaluative lens

The evaluation used Verint's heuristic usability audit methodology, a structured framework that moves from interface review through to actionable recommendations. Rather than treating all issues as equally weighted, the analysis was organized around a central principle: orientation comes first.

Visitors who cannot locate themselves within a site structure are forced into repeated scanning, trial-and-error navigation, and increased cognitive effort. Addressing orientation failures before visual or stylistic concerns produces the highest impact per unit of development effort, a framing the client team found immediately useful when sequencing implementation.

Interface Review→ Issue Identification→ Pattern Analysis→ Recommendations

Pages Evaluated

Maps and Locations pages
Parking on Campus pages
Interactive campus map tool
Contact Us pages
Supporting navigation and internal linking

Usability Areas Assessed

Navigation and orientation clarity
Breadcrumb visibility and hierarchy cues
Link labeling and messaging clarity
Link execution and interaction feedback
Navigation menu consistency
Information visibility above the fold
Interactive tool usability

Many of the usability challenges within these sections were not caused by missing information, but by inconsistent navigation signals and labeling cues. When visitors cannot determine where they are within the site structure, they must rely on trial-and-error or repeated scanning to confirm whether they're in the right place.

Key Findings

Six navigation and orientation failures, each with a clear fix

Findings were documented with supporting evidence, user impact framing, and concrete recommendations, structured to move directly into an implementation backlog.

Orientation cues were inconsistent across pages

The global navigation did not consistently highlight the visitor's current location within the site, leaving them without a reliable signal for where they were in the hierarchy.

🔍 Impact: Visitors lacked the visual anchor needed to self-orient, a foundational requirement for confident navigation.

→ Highlight current page in global nav → Consistent breadcrumb placement above the fold

Breadcrumb trails were hidden below the fold

Breadcrumb navigation appeared below the page fold on some pages, limiting its effectiveness and reducing visibility for visitors who rely on these cues to understand site structure.

🔍 Impact: The primary mechanism for understanding path and hierarchy was invisible to most visitors on arrival.

→ Reposition breadcrumbs above the fold on all pages

Sub-navigation menus were inconsistently present

Within sections such as Parking on Campus, sub-navigation appeared on some pages but was absent on others, disrupting navigation continuity and forcing visitors to rely on browser back buttons to retrace their path.

🔍 Impact: Visitors lost the ability to move laterally within a section, breaking the hub-and-spoke navigation pattern the site relied on.

→ Ensure sub-nav appears consistently across related pages → Maintain hub-and-spoke structure within each section

Link labels didn't match destination page headings

Several links directed visitors to pages whose headings did not match the label they clicked. This mismatch created uncertainty about whether they had arrived at the correct destination.

🔍 Impact: Even when visitors arrived at the right page, they couldn't confirm it, introducing doubt that disrupts task flow and trust.

→ Align link labels with destination page headings → Replace "Read More" with descriptive link text

Interaction feedback for links was limited

Links lacked consistent hover states and visited-link indicators, reducing the visual feedback available to visitors and making it harder to track previously explored content.

🔍 Impact: Without visual feedback, visitors couldn't distinguish where they had been from where they hadn't, increasing the risk of re-exploring dead ends.

→ Implement hover states for navigation links → Introduce visual indicators for visited links

Interactive map functionality was not explained

The campus map relied on layer selections to reveal information, but included no instructions or affordance cues. Visitors had to discover functionality through trial and error.

🔍 Impact: A visitor already uncertain about campus navigation was asked to puzzle out an unfamiliar interface, compounding friction at the worst possible moment.

→ Add visible instructions for map layer interaction → Add labeled legend elements to clarify map symbols

Outcome & Impact

Findings delivered, discussed, and acted on

Findings were presented to the ASU client team in a structured stakeholder session, walking through the full deck slide by slide, with speaker notes prepared to support additional context at each finding. The format was designed to invite discussion rather than function as a passive read-out, turning the handoff into a working session where the team could weigh priorities and surface platform constraints.

Follow-up communication from the client team confirmed the results.

99%

Of recommendations were implemented

The remaining items were constrained by the website management platform, not by disagreement with the findings. Nearly every actionable recommendation moved into the implementation backlog and was shipped.

🧭

Stronger Orientation Cues

Navigation highlighting and breadcrumb positioning were corrected, giving visitors a reliable signal for where they were within the site at all times.

🔗

Clearer Navigation & Labels

Sub-nav consistency was restored, generic link labels replaced with descriptive text, and link-to-heading mismatches resolved, reducing visitor uncertainty at every step.

🗺️

Improved Map & Interaction Feedback

Map interaction guidance was added and link feedback strengthened, making the most-used tools easier to navigate for visitors with no prior experience of the interface.

Strategic Takeaway

The highest-impact improvements often look unremarkable in a changelog, a breadcrumb moved above the fold, a link label rewritten. But for a visitor trying to find parking before a campus tour, that change is the difference between arriving confidently and not arriving at all.

, Reflection on this engagement

This engagement reinforced a consistent truth in usability work: navigation clarity and orientation aren't polish, they're infrastructure. When visitors understand where they are, how they got there, and where they can go next, the site gets out of their way, and the task completes itself.

Arizona State University · Content & Navigation Usability Audit · Winter 2023

Heuristic EvaluationNavigation UXInformation ArchitectureContent AuditOrientation DesignInteraction Feedback