SWLAW Website
Maximizing user flow for prospective students
Redesigning the website for Southwestern Law School.
Project Overview
Client: Southwestern Law School
Project Type: Web Design, UX/UI
Tools: Figma, ChatGPT, Claude, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator,
My Role: Lead UX/UI Designer
CONTEXT
Rebranding To Fit The Modern Era
As a part of Southwestern Law School's rebranding, I was given the job of refreshing the website to improve the application journey of our target audience, prospective students.
PROBLEM
An Outdated Website With High Bounce Rates
55%
Avg. bounce rates for the current school website
Google Analytics (2025)
85%
of interviewees said they left the site and googled for their answers instead.
Focus Group Study
My Task
Develop a user journey for prospective students that informs them of general questions they might have about the school, and ultimately lead them to apply.
Key Painpoints
Use our new rebranded identity
Represent compelling aspects of the school compared to our direct competitors
Acting the sole UX designer on the team
RESEARCH
How can attract prospective students when there is such a strong competition in SoCal?
From studying the current top food ordering apps and conducting Multiple Focus Groups with 20 participants, I was able to uncover some key insights:
Poor Hierarchy
Users didn't understand the design of the site or how to find what they needed.
"I didn't understand why the navigation bar was split so far apart and what the sections on the page were for. I just left the site and googled my questions."
Improve the navigation bar and modules.
Make a less complex navigation bar and work on the visual layout of the main webpage.
Confusing Hero Section
Student's expresed their frustration with the main webpage, not understanding when something was clickable.
"I didn't even know the virtual tour text on the image was clickable."
Create a consistent component library.
Users shouldn't have to think so hard about basic navigation elements and waste their time.
Lack of Desireable Information
Student's shared that the information they wanted to find wasn't present on the main webpage.
"A lot of the information on the main webpage weren't things that I was looking for when I was a prospective student."
Design a clear scrollable page of information for prospective students.
Add modules that reflect the information a prospective student would have when considering applying for the school.
DESIGN PROCESS
Multiple Iterations and Testing Phases
Before I began, there wasn't a designer on the team who was versed in Figma. As the sole UX/UI designer, I taught myself the program and continued to iterate and conduct multiple rounds of testing.
Wireframes
Because we were starting with a previous version, we had a general idea of what we wanted on the page. My job was to understand how to iterate upon that and improve. My process started with brainstorming what else could be added to the site. Through our research, we determined things that prospective students would want to see on our website.
Sections to include:
Strong Hero image with apply and virtual tour CTA's• Clear navigation bar with current students and future students tabs
Appealing stats that make the school stand out
All the J.D. programs listed out clearly
Newsroom section of relevant events pertaining to the school
Meet the Faculty section, highlighting popular faculty members• Featured events for prospective students
My Approach
Sketching out wireframes on paper for the sections allowed me to quickly iterate and imagine how the whole site might come together. From here, I was able to produce digital wireframes to present to my CMO for feedback.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
After producing a low-fidelity prototype and presenting it to the CMO and other stakeholders, I received valuable insights, implemented requested changes, and began designing a High-Fidelity Prototype.
High-Fidelity Prototype Part 1
I quickly noticed some pain points as I worked on the received notes and rendered the designs further. I had to figure out a way to find a balance between the two designs.
Some pain points we ran into were:
Cutting down navigation bar of too many tabs left it more confusing
Having to click items for more info did not help streamline the process
The admissions event section needed multiple events
Visually simplifying sections did not improve the user flow
Focus Group Part 2
After iterating more on the prototype, I reached the point where I was ready to receive feedback from our users. This focus group consisted of new students who had not participated in the first one. We received a lot of good insights from these users and I was able to produce a nearly finished design.
High-Fidelity Prototype Part 2
Finally, with all the accumulated data, I was able to go back to my design and address all the faults that were discovered. I decided to approach this final design in a different way, by focusing on a user journey for the prospective students themselves and their journey to apply to the school.
SOLUTION
A Clean Website With A Clear User Journey for Prospective Students
Southwestern Law School has a 3rd party company of engineers that I was able to meet with and discuss the next steps of launching this page. While working on this project, I had to understand the limitations of our capabilities and design within the scope of our budget. As the design for this project is nearing its last stages, we are preparing for the next steps to launch this site before the end of the year.