Qasid Arabic Institute, located in Amman, Jordan, attracts hundreds of participants each term from distinguished universities and colleges around the world, as well as government and non-government organizations. Their partner institutions include, among many others, Harvard, Oxford, and Princeton, and organizations such as the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and Foreign Affairs Canada. Students spend their time learning from highly qualified instructors and also immersing themselves in the local culture.

The objective of this project was to improve the user experience, restructure and streamline the content into logical sections, and provide easy access to information about their core offerings. Their web presence needed to be brought in line with current best practices, since the last major redesign was several years old.

An in-depth study and website audit was conducted to understand the Qasid experience. I was invited to their institute in Amman and spent four weeks engaging with staff and students, trying to live their experience — from arrivals at the airport, to orientation, first classes, and field trips. Interviews were conducted with various staff to learn about the history of the institute and their particular roles. I also spoke informally with many of the students to hear why they selected this particular institute and how their overall experience had been.

With the insight from this trip, in addition to studying best practices employed by many of the institute's university and college partners, I was better equipped to make improvements to the website. Redundant content was combined and reworded for simplicity, sections and pages were rearranged for better organization, and the site navigation was made more human-friendly. This led to the drafting of wireframes, followed by the user-interface design, and finally the development of the website. After user-testing and further improvements, the website was launched. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive which was further aided by improvements — led by Qasid's IT team — to the online Student Portal and Learning Management System.