Minnesota Women’s Press
Client Overview
Minnesota Women's Press offers authentic community-based journalism that amplifies and inspires the stories, action steps, and leadership of powerful, everyday women (cis and trans) and nonbinary people.
The Challenge
I took on a client project with other designers to evaluate the usability of an existing website, identify key areas for improvement, and visualize recommended changes. Organization background and goals were provided— they wanted to know how well the current platform was working for users so that they can make essential changes to improve its usability for primary users.
The Solution
Our design team conducted website evaluations and usability tests with real users to find common themes and insights, for site improvement. Each team member finishes the project by writing a Findings & Recommendations report, to send to the client, Minnesota Women’s Press.
My Roles: User Experience Designer, UX Researcher, Design Team Member
Duration: 1 week
Tools: Figma, Sketching, Zoom, Google Slides, Google Sheets/Microsoft Excel, Usability Testing
Client: Minnesota Women’s Press
The Process
Day One and Two : Research & Insights
Wanting to reveal potential user issues, our team started the project by familiarizing ourselves with and reviewing the user goals and site goals of Minnesota Women’s Press to determine the following Research Goals:
Identify positive and negative experiences during CORE tasks and site navigation
Gain insights to user comprehension of site content
Synthesize findings to identify recommendations of change within the website
In preparation of working with actual users, we drew up a Testing script to facilitate Usability Testing containing:
Test Goals: to determine what we want to learn or gain insights on
Four Key Tasks/Scenarios: to assess users’ comprehension/navigation of the website’s most important tasks
Pre-Interview, Post-Interview Questions: to retrieve background knowledge and users’ thoughts
In tandem with writing up the test script, to identify potential usability problems and form hypotheses for usability testing, each team member spent time exploring the website and conducted individual evaluations. I chose to perform a Heuristic Analysis as my evaluation method.
Heuristic Analysis
After we conducted our evaluations of the website, we came together to compare our findings and form hypotheses for Usability Testing. These were some common themes that emerged from our evaluations that we hypothesized would occur during usability testing. We went back to the drawing board to rethink and solidify our testing processes, based on our findings.
Violations of Heuristic Principles, Common Themes
Day Three : Solidifying Testing Procedures
Because of our time constraints, testing with users would only last 30 minutes. Using our findings from the previous days, our design team ran practice tests, then went back to the drawing board to rethink our testing process and continued editing the wording of certain tasks and questions to prevent priming the users and to efficiently gain as much accurate insight as possible.
(Our Team Brainstorm Session: Figma whiteboard)
(Team Figma whiteboard: We walked through everyone’s evaluations and found common themes within the site)
Day Four and Five : Usability Test and Data-Synthesizing
Participants were recruited based on MWP’s following target Primary and Secondary User demographics–
PRIMARY: Minnesota women under 35 looking to connect with stories that are relevant to their perspective and experiences.
SECONDARY: Male allies looking for stories with a more balanced perspective that are missing elsewhere and to challenge their own beliefs.
Team Members recruited 1-2 participants each and individually conducted Usability Tests, in addition to the 5 pre-recruited participants. A total of 11 participants were recruited— 6 for individual tests, 5 for team-testing.
Usability Testing
Research Goals
Identify pain points and points of improvement in User experience
Gain insights to User comprehension of site content
Synthesize findings to identify recommendations of change within the website
Testing Goals
Gain insight into how users interact with the Minnesota Women’s Press website.
Understand user pain points when interacting with the website.
Understand how people prefer to give money to Minnesota Women’s Press.
Identify which Minnesota Women’s Press channels users are interested in subscribing to.
Identify how trustworthy users feel the Minnesota Women’s Press website is.
Action Steps
30-minute tests, pre- and post-test interviews
Observers/Note-takers record video and data
Synthesize qualitative and quantitative data
Finalize data to create presentation for Client
We’ll start off the testing with 15 minute interviews, followed by a closing survey.
Thomas and a test participant walking through website tasks
(Pictured on the right: Design Team Member Connor Squires)
(Pictured below: Design Team Member Rylie Lonetti)
(Pictured above: participant exploring Minnesota Women’s Press)
(Pictured left: Design Team Member Keira Gatta)
Key Learnings from Usability Tests
Navigation Issues
Stems from a lack of hierarchy
Navigation of header is confusing
Header navigation bar needs to be changed/simplified
Lack of Breadcrumbing hurts exploration and navigation
Lack of Clarification
Users are often confused because of the title/label scheme of articles
Confusing language/wording
Confusing processes during subscribing and check-outs during paying/donating
Lack of Hierarchy
Made it hard for users to find important information
Makes it easy to skip past important information
Everything on the pages blend together
Information Overload
Excessive text and pictures causes users to skim and skip important info
Too much distractions on screen causes confusion
All pages are messy and cluttered
Stems from lack of hierarchy
With a success rate of 54%, finding the Changemakers’ Alliance and opting to join as a member was the most difficult task within the Usability Testing.
With a success rate of 100% and being rated the least difficult task, users voiced that making a donation was the easiest part of the usability test.
Conclusion
Next Steps
Follow up with Client
Expand on Findings & Recommendations report
Create wireframes based on recommendations and findings
Continue tests with new users to find further points of improvement
Conduct more interviews to solidify findings
Key Takeaways
At the start of this project, I had a struggle in not being married to my own thoughts and ideas— the user comes first, and their collective insight is ultimately what we want to measure.
In this project, each team member was able to practice their Test Facilitation skills, moderating and controlling the flow of the sessions.
Conduct research in order to understand pain points and opportunity areas
Evaluate the usability of an existing design using a set of pre-defined success criteria (Heuristic Analysis), (Usability Tests)
Adjust decisions based on project constraints
Propose relevant methods for evaluating designs/prototypes
Gain experience planning and facilitating in-person and remote usability tests
Synthesize research findings to identify insights
Present design recommendations that support key goals