SC Awards UX Case Study
Designing clarity, intent, and urgency for a data-driven, multi-audience platform
Product
SC Awards (SC Media) https://www.scworld.com/sc-awards
Role
UX Designer & Researcher
Timeline
14 days
Overview
The SC Awards platform powers one of the cybersecurity industry’s most established recognition programs, supporting a diverse audience that includes vendors, practitioners, judges, and sponsors. Visitors arrive with clear and time-sensitive goals such as submitting nominations, reviewing finalists, participating in judging, and assessing the credibility and impact of the awards. The platform must balance authority, clarity, and efficiency to support confident decision making.
The Problem
Despite its authority and content depth, the SC Awards page places unnecessary cognitive strain on users at critical decision moments.
Key Findings
False affordances: A paragraph-level text element accounted for over 3% of all clicks despite being non-interactive, indicating misleading styling and broken expectations
Shallow engagement: Nearly 60% of users never scroll far enough to see essential information, signaling poor above-the-fold prioritization
Over-reliance on navigation: High interaction with dropdown navigation suggests users do not find answers within the page itself
Methods Used
Heuristic Evaluation: I evaluated the SC Awards page against established usability principles, focusing on hierarchy, affordances, visibility of system status, and efficiency of use.
Behavioral Data Review: Click and scroll data were analyzed to validate usability issues and identify where users disengaged or misinterpreted interface elements.
Caption: Heat map provided by CRA Data & Analytics teams.
The Solution
Enable faster, more confident user decisions by clarifying hierarchy, aligning navigation to user intent, and elevating critical, time-sensitive actions.
The redesigned SC Awards experience:
- Guides users by intent rather than content volume
- Makes deadlines and participation paths immediately visible
- Eliminates misleading interaction cues
- Encourages deeper engagement by surfacing critical information early
Outcomes Qualitative & Data-Aligned:
- Reduced misclick risk by correcting false affordances. Improved clarity of next steps without reliance on navigation
- Better alignment between user intent and page structure
- Stronger foundation for increased nomination starts and completions
- Feedback & Iteration
Key Feedback:
- Users wanted immediate confirmation of what the awards process involved before scrolling or committing.
Design Response:
A concise “How It Works” section and clearer CTA labeling were introduced above the fold, reducing uncertainty and encouraging deeper engagement.
