Enhanced Website Sentiment

Testimonial

"Akua was able to verify insights we knew, some we assumed, and some we had no idea of! It's really helping with the development of our new website brand”- Ryan Breisch Executive Director, LCRB

Outcome

The What: Problem

The Literacy Council, a local literacy non-profit, wanted to improve user understanding of business initiatives and solve website usability pain-points for a website rebrand

The Literacy Council of Reading-Berks (LCRB), is dedicated to putting an end to illiteracy in the community by providing resources such as one-on-one tutoring programs, while expanding their services to include other offerings like GED preparation and Workforce Development Programs.

With these expanded offerings, stakeholders found the website to be outdated and unsuccessful at sharing the LCRB mission. Community members were still unaware of the range of services offered. The team aimed to:

gain insights into the target audiences
best practices to inform areas of redesign
understand the current website's performance
user engagement, navigation, and content effectiveness

The How: Methods & Process

Enhanced Website Usability through analyzed heuristic evaluation, in-depth Moderated Interviews and Usability Testing

As the lead UX researcher, I was responsible for exploring, facilitating, and executing methods to understand:

the user's experience navigating the website
roadblocks and sentiments

Objective:

The primary goal was to identify usability issues, understand current user sentiment of LCRB offerings/presentation, and offer feedback to the Executive Director and the website design team for the updated website.

Methodology:

Step 1 - Collaborative Stakeholder Meetings and Crafting a Plan

Collaborated with the Executive Director and Executive Assistant to define research objectives and plan.
1. - - Heuristic Evaluation to improve design principles
    - In-depth Moderated Usability Interviews
    - Focused on interviews with the three target sub-groups to get a fuller picture of user sentiment

Step 2 - Study Guideline Creation and Participant recruitment

Methods Used:

Heuristic Evaluation: Quick and cost-effective, providing feedback to the team while waiting for user insights.
- Severity Scale: Ranging from 0 (no usability problem) to 4 (major usability problem), help feature prioritization.

Figure 1: Heuristic Evaluation

Usability Testing

Participants: 3-4 participants per user persona subgroup: including students, tutors, board members, and business partners
30 minute interviews with 15 minute buffers

Overall, 10 30-minute moderated interviews were conducted representing a mix of the personas and levels of familiarity with the LCRB website.

Predetermined Tasks: Participants were given a series of predefined tasks to complete on the website, including finding specific information, exploring services, and signing up for a resource.
- Incentives were offered

Step 3 - Facilitating Usability Interviews: Gathering Insights

The sessions were screen and audio recorded to capture participants' interactions, while their feedback and observations were noted during the usability testing process.

Figure 2: Research Discussion Guide

Figure 3: Usability Testing Process

Step 4 - Analysis and Recommendations

Analyzed and summarized key insights from interview data

Qualitative interview data: transcribed and analyzed using Looppanel and Excel
Presented evidence-based findings, accompanied by recommendations to boost usability and user sentiment.

Figure 4: Thematic Analysis

The What Else: Learnings

Enhancing design principles of website and improving user sentiment of LCRB services

Results

Using the heuristic evaluation a few opportunities were found for rapid improvements with the flow to enhance usability such as:

Enlarging the font for better readability
Correcting any buttons/links that did not work as expected

Current Website*circled areas note heuristic improvement areas-links not working

The most impactful roadblocks on the website based on interview insights such as:

Simplify menu offerings
Expand language translation
Include more visuals

Data Analysis and Presentation*powerpoint

The website is currently under redesign and expected to be completed within the next quarter. There's a projected improvement to user sentiment.

Website Improvements

Next Steps:

Users consistently mentioned simplifying the information organization to increase the websites ease of use. With user research becoming an important piece in the website development, following up in future sprints with:

Using A/B testing to measure the effects of different feature designs
Card sorting is a great method to use in our continued research to help support the designer in creating a useful structure.
- This would be most feasible as it's quick to facilitate and doesn't require as many resources.

Future Considerations:

A target segment population for the study included non-native english speakers. Communication barriers could be inevitable. Having a translator could reduce those barriers. Keeping in mind the translations could carry their own layer of interpretations.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse