Designing Findability with User Research
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Graduate students use various criteria to select an engineering program. While higher education websites provide excellent resources describing this criteria, they’re often distributed across many sites and pages making it hard to find.
This post describes how I ran an in-person, moderated usability test to understand how well users find this criteria. Then, I talk about key findings and recommendations for a new design.
STUDY DESIGN
Six graduate students signed up for the in-person, moderated study. I used a within-subjects approach where each participant was asked to complete three tasks using Design A and Design B. While the tasks were the same, the designs and content were not.
I screen recorded their interactions and timed each task. After each task, I asked them to rate the difficult of the task.
KEY FINDINGS
DESIGN A vs. DESIGN B
Across all tasks on Design A, users had trouble finding program information and felt less satisfied after each task.
INFORMATION SEEKING TRENDS
Regardless of design or task, I noticed that the majority of users went straight to the departments and centers menu item. Then, they started scanning headers to find the information they sought.
USER PRIORITIES
During the study, graduate students voiced that they prioritize research and faculty fit when selecting an engineering program. A content strategy to highlight and publish these areas was developed with the communications team.
UI RECOMMENDATIONS + CURRENT VERSION
I provided recommendations to the lead designer as high-fidelity wireframes. Then, we developed the following components.
NEW RESEARCH CARDS
Recommendation: Provide robust information regarding degree information, direct links to research areas, and application information.
The degrees and research page is one of the most visited pages on the site. By adding this information here, users have a better idea of research offerings.
NEW DEPARTMENT CARDS
Recommendation: Provide direct links to undergraduate, graduate, and research information to serve multiple users (e.g.- like prospective undergraduates, faculty, and partner institutions).
New department cards have three new sections — Undergraduate, Graduate, and Research — with direct links to information users want most. This component appears on pages like this news article.
NEW PROGRAM INFORMATION SECTION
Recommendation: On a single department listing, provide direct links to its undergraduate, graduate, and research information.
This component appears on a department home page.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I really like running in-person, moderated user tests. There’s much more that I learn from users, especially before and after the tests.
The tools I used were Apple’s Quicktime for screen recording, my iPhone’s stopwatch, Excel spreadsheets, Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the video, and Vimeo to host the final videos.