Leander Independent School District (LISD)
UX Design Research
Austin Community College
April 2025
Problem: A school district in Leander, TX was looking to streamline the content on their website, but administrators were unsure of what pages to prioritize.
Research Approach: Exploratory research was used to build contextual understanding of the district, and interviews and usability tests were conducted to discover how parents were using the LISD website and the challenges they faced.
Result: 6 content subject areas were recommended for prioritization based on qualitative and quantitative data, as well as increasing parent authorship of content to increase user engagement and reduce costs.
Research Plan
New articles, demographic data, and social media platforms were mined to better understand the client and community sentiment to inform the research. This step revealed rapidly decreasing enrollment and a $34 million district budget deficit. Recommendations would ideally include doing more with less.
The research plan helped define and track:
UX research and Business goals
Key metrics to measure task performance and user confidence
Recruitment strategy and artifacts
Interview questions and methodology
Interviews & Testing
New articles, demographic data, and social media platforms were mined to better understand the client and inform the research.
The research plan helped define and track:
UX research and Business goals
Key metrics to measure task performance and user confidence
Recruitment strategy and artifacts
Interview questions and methodology
Parents tended to have a
“get-in, get-out” mindset.
“You get so much information and that, I think people started to have, kind of…like, rejection for it.”
Insights
Parents seek information directly from their student’s school website.
100% of interviewed parents said they would go to their child’s school website or call the school rather than access the LISD website.
Parents trust comments and insights from other parents over district sources.
“I would take what I hear from parents to be more like, real…
I would believe them more…”
What I Learned
New articles, demographic data, and social media platforms were mined to better understand the client and community sentiment to inform the research. This step revealed rapidly decreasing enrollment and a $34 million district budget deficit. Recommendations from research would ideally include doing more with less.
The research plan helped define and track:
UX research and Business goals
Key metrics to measure task performance and user confidence
Recruitment strategy and artifacts
Interview questions and methodology