Re-imagining a User-Centered Portal Experience

The TIC engages over a thousand users to give the Johns Hopkins web portal a user-centric, modern makeover

Developed and maintained by the Johns Hopkins Technology Innovation Center (TIC), myJH is a web portal for Johns Hopkins online tools and resources. An average of 45,000 Johns Hopkins faculty, staff, and students come to the myJH portal website daily to access email, HR tools, cloud services, and other applications essential to their day-to-day work at Johns Hopkins.

Starting in 2019, in collaboration with partners across the Johns Hopkins institution, the TIC set out to completely rebuild and redesign this web portal. The goals of this effort were to leverage more updated technology as well as bring users a more unified, consistent, and pleasant experience.

Designing to meet the needs of tens of thousands of users, each with different roles and priorities, is no small task. The team started by studying myJH web traffic and user behavior patterns through years of website analytics data. To better understand where the existing portal excelled and identify opportunities for improvement, the TIC released a survey and conducted user interviews to gather feedback from nearly 1,000 Johns Hopkins students, faculty, and staff.

User interviews were conducted at multiple divisions, including with Nursing students.

Among the most requested features were simplified navigation and the ability to customize the landing page to showcase content and tools most relevant to the user.

“I’d like to select the things that I use most often…so that I don’t have to navigate the drop-downs every time,” a Johns Hopkins University student said.

Building from these ideas, the new myJH offers a robust resource search, recommended apps, and favorites in a modern design that scales for an optimal experience on any device.

You can now easily use myJH from your phone or tablet.

“I love it! I really appreciate the ability to pin my favorites to the top,” said an instructional designer with Johns Hopkins University.

By December 2020, all users were migrated to the new web portal. Although the new design is out, the TIC is continuing to add new features such as relevant news and events, while keeping tabs on incoming feedback from the Johns Hopkins community.