RhetTech
Abstract
The SHSU Active Minds website actively motivates students to seek out support to better their mental health. According to the SHSU Active Minds website, 39% of students in college experienced a significant mental health issue, and 76% of young adults turn to a friend first when they are struggling instead of institutional help. Over the course of three to four weeks, I studied the SHSU Active Minds website to find ways that might help improve its usability and attempt to answer questions such as: how does this website make a student who is struggling with mental health feel when interacting with it and what changes can be made to this website to produce a greater impact? Through extensive research and usability testing, I concluded that the SHSU Active Minds website does not implement universal design and lacks diverse representation and information. The conduction of my research has been through scholarly articles, data, and usability testing for user experience of the website. My findings present a few complications of design and mental struggle I experienced when trying to find access to resources and identify diversity within the website. I offer the consideration of implementing plain language structure elements to increase the website’s designability and ways to address the diverse experiences of student users that are battling mental health.
Recommended Citation
Johnson, D'ettra
(2024)
"The Need for Redesign of the SHSU Active Minds Website: Usability & UX Report: An Analysis of the SHSU Active Minds Website,"
RhetTech: Vol. 6, Article 7.
Available at:
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/rhettech/vol6/iss1/7
