User’s were frustrated with navigating the site and finding information, but also stated that the site could be overwhelming at times.
- Users were unable to quickly navigate the site due to the limiting options available on the navbar and home page.
-Finding links to Resources, Volunteering, and Adoptable pets took users a very long time and caused visible frustrations. Users had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the home page and adoptions page to find proper information.
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Help and Documentation, User Control and Freedom, and Site Consistency were the three major problem areas.
Using Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics, I uncovered three issues that would potentially hurt usability for the users during testing.
Users claimed they typically look for ways to get involved, general shelter information, and helpful pet information for certain cases when visiting sites related to pet care.
5 Users were interviewed on their goals for visiting similar sites and their experience.
I love animals, so being able to help out the shelter whenever they need help is super important to me, but sometimes I have to go in person to ask.
I have so many dogs, so a potential vet visit is super stressful with how much it can cost. I usually try to find out as much as I can about my pet's behavior before making that call."
There are a ton of resources for finding out stuff for my pet so its always a lot more convenient when I can just ask the shelter instead of having to sift through articles."
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60% of Users had a negative experience in the past with online Pet Care research.
Help and Documentation, User Control and Freedom, and Site Consistency are three key problems to focus testing on.
Adoption, Volunteering, and Understanding Local Pet Care Options were commonly discussed during interview sessions.
Using previous insight, three ideal users for the site were discovered.
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User Stories helped to understand the user’s needs for the site based on their goals.
"As an occasional user, I want to see an updated homepage so that I can easily find information regarding pet care."
"As someone who is hoping to adopt, I want to see an in-depth adoption page so that I can explore my options in depth."
"As someone who is hoping to volunteer, I want to see what my local shelter has going on so that I can connect with them on a higher level."
Three scenarios with two or three tasks were given to each User during testing which provided consistent results on the usability of the site’s current navigation.
Scenarios included a major focus on the goals of each persona, while also accounting for the possible usability issues found during the heuristic evaluation.
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Time to Complete Task vs Current Site
From an Average of 192 Seconds to 9.8 Seconds.
From an Average of 37 seconds to 19.6 seconds.
From an Average of 79.6 seconds to 6.8 seconds.
Main site navigation issues were significantly improved by adding several easy to access links on the navigation bar as well as a drop down menu to improve overall user freedom.
What I learned...
Being my first UX project, it was very insightful on how to collect data for this kind of project. It was interesting to see just how much of an impact changing small aspects of a sites navigation can have with reducing stress on tasks.
What I wish I did differently
Due to the time constraints of the project and overall guided structure, I was unable to address another major aspect of the sites shortcomings, which was the search function. It is almost completely unusable in its current state, but with the changes made in this report, users were able to navigate anywhere on the site with ease. In the future I would like to also be able to further spend more time with users and utilize other research and analysis methods to come to stronger conclusions.
Thank you for reading!
For any inquiries or just to chat, you can reach me at daniel25951@gmail.com.