Usability Testing with Students: Pratt.edu

Team

Hyerim Hwang, Meera Nathan, Shivani Ishwar

My Role

UX Researcher, User Interviewer & Usability Analyst (EXPAND ROLE)

Tools

D3.js, IPEVO V4K Ultra High Definition USB Document Camera, Tableau Public, G suite

A Summary Of Our Timeline

MAKE TIMELINE PHOTO

Stakeholder Meeting ⟶ Set the Target User & Tasks ⟶ User Recruitments & Managements ⟶ User Interviews ⟶ Evaluations ⟶ Recommendations

Understanding The Stakeholder Needs

Understanding Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is located in New York City, which serves 5,000 students across undergraduate and graduate with over 50 degrees and programs on offer. Pratt’s website is an important tool for students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other members of the Pratt community to find information about the admissions process, academic curriculum, events, and more than the website has to offer.

Q&A Session with the client

Q1. Overall audience in pratt.edu

prospective students (primary user group)
Students - undergrad and grad
Other audiences (alumni, faculty, staff)

Q2. Any concerns or thoughts about the current site?

Concern 1: people use google instead of native search.
Concern 2: The platform has been 5-10 years old (disputed) and the architecture is 10+ years old (No overarching strategy).

Q3. Areas of focus should be?

Biggest priorities: Admissions, Homepage, News
Admissions (prospective students*)
Academics
Homepage: a missed opportunity, no information there
Mobile site - “goes without saying” they know it’s bad
News/Events tab: how are people using this?

Set the Target User & Tasks

The primary user group in pratt.edu is the prospective students. Focus on current undergrad students who are thinking of doing a master's degree would be also a part of the primary user group. In that way, the current and prospective student data without two separate user-profiles were selected.

Undergraduate student in 3rd or 4th year
Have considered a graduate degree

From the Google Analytics research team's findings, the academic and admission pages were the most popular in pratt.edu. However, people use an outside source to search for academic or admissions information instead of using an organic search. Thus, the research team decided to pick four pages that are popular to visit or have a plan to reorganize by the clients, and tried to capture how users typically interact with various sections of the Pratt website. Also, the device usage charts showed (35%) that still has views on mobile site, the research team was conducted partially on a desktop interface, and partially on mobile.

Understanding The Users

User Interviews

User testing was conducted on the Pratt Manhattan campus by two members of the research team at a time. One in each pair acted as a moderator, while the other functioned as a secondary observer and note-taker. The audio and video recordings were also taken during the test including the screen capture program Quicktime player (used on a desktop Mac interface) and the IPEVO V4K Ultra High Definition USB Document Camera (used to record the mobile devices). The research team also prepare the post-test questionnaire and questions, and participants were also asked a question after each task of the user test, to determine the user experience of completing those tasks individually.

Evaluations with Users' Quotes

Task Ratings

Overall, finding information can be confusing and difficult. One of the main confusion was they dug more than their expectation.

Final Design

Recommendation 1: Redesigning the homepage

Observation: For the homepage, only one out of the eight users who tested the interface made use of the arrow buttons on the banner, and the listings of the various schools below the banner was a source of confusion for many users.

Suggestions: Instead of a large banner, the page could have a picture of Pratt’s campus, which one user said they “would expect to see” on the homepage. Below that are the six schools, each containing a short description of the school and a menu for the programs offered.

Recommendation 2: Redesigning the admissions page

Observation: One common frustration expressed by the users was that clicking on a label or contextual link (like “cost of attendance”) took them to either graduate or undergraduate information, with no indication. On the admissions pages, due to the amount of text as well as its size. One user stated that reading this information felt like “reading an article” and many people expressed the desire to use the browser’s Find function (cmd+F) to isolate the answers they were searching for.

Suggestions: The suggestion of admission page would have an immediate separation between undergraduate and graduate admissions, hopefully leading to less user confusion and let them feel like a breakpoint.

Recommendation 3: Improving the layout and content

Observation: The researchers noticed that most participants did not click on the side navigation bars to look for information. This often led to frustration: one user said, “All of the words distracted me,” while another commented, “I’m not sure how to find” what they were looking for.

Suggestions: The recommendation on each sub-menu layout features would be a brightly-colored navigation menu, as well as bold, large headers to break up long paragraphs of text.

Recommendation 4: Improving responsiveness for mobile users

Observation: While there is a “hamburger”-style menu at the top of the page, denoted by three horizontal lines, users either didn’t notice it at first or thought of it as a last resort when it came to browsing on mobile. Also, the search button is nested within the hamburger menu, they will not find the option to search the website. Another important discovery was the calendar view of the events section is located very far down the page, which meant most users didn’t discover it.

Suggestions: The recommendations on mobile screen would be having a hamburger menu and search button are highlighted in this version of the website, making it easier for users to discover these functions. The calendar is consistent with most users’ expectations, leading to less confusion.

Reflections

Pratt.edu is already a well-made website with great consistency in colors, layouts, and structures. Focusing on the research team's findings, the Pratt Institute website would be more beneficial to the understand-ability and discoverability of information that users are searching for. As one a user in Pratt.edu, I had a great experience meeting others' concerns and thoughts while conducting and evaluating the tasks, and also had extremely useful insights in sharing with clients, as a member of the research team.