As part of my PgCert in Human-Computer Interaction Design, I completed an Evaluating Interactive Systems module, which involved conducting a usability evaluation of the Diabetes UK website.
Process
This section outlines the step-by-step process that was taken to evaluate an interactive system.
Step 1
Requirements
Step 2
Introduction
Step 3
Methodology
Step 4
Data Analysis
Step 5
Recommendations
Step 6
Conclusion
Step 1:
Requirements
Diabetes UK had recently migrated their site to a new fundraising platform.
This evaluation aimed to gain an understanding of its usability and user experience (UX) by addressing 4 key concerns.
The report that I produced outlines the methodology followed to conduct the usability tests, analysis of the main findings and recommendations on what can be improved.
My task was to plan and conduct usability tests, analyse the data yielded, present the results and derive four key recommendations on what can be improved.
Diabetes UK was particularly interested in gaining insight into the following 4 points:
Initial impressions of the Swim22 landing page including the clarity of what the event is about, how compelling the copy and imagery is and more.
The UX of the Swim22 landing page and the site overall.
The usability of various tasks including signing up, setting a fundraising target, supporting a friend and more.
The user journey from the Diabetes UK website to the Swim22 microsite.
Step 2:
Introduction
The purpose of this report is to articulate how relevant evaluation techniques were applied to address four key usability and two user experience (UX) concerns, relating to the Diabetes UK website, and its microsite, Swim 22.
The report details: how the evaluation was ethically planned and conducted, how the data was critically analysed, and how four actionable recommendations for Diabetes UK were derived.
In terms of scope, this evaluation included only:
Remote moderated evaluation techniques (as a result of social distancing)
Evaluating usability and (UX) concerns raised in the brief
Exploring usability and (UX) issues, not user errors
Step 3:
Methodology
The evaluation techniques used included:
A 15-second test to assess first impressions, USERindex was used to quantitatively measure the user experience and Concurrent Think-Aloud (CTA) +SEQ was used to evaluate the usability.
Planning: Participants and ethical considerations
I first created a participant screener to identify the most appropriate participants, who accurately represent Swim 22’s users. I selected 5 participants.
Ethical considerations
When selecting participants, I ensured that they did not have Diabetes. I did not ask participants explicitly about their experiences with the condition but instead asked in the participant screener for applicants to state if they have any medical conditions.
Information sheet and Consent form
I created a participant information sheet and a participant consent form and gave a copy to each participant before commencing the evaluation. I created these documents by adapting City, University of London’s (2021) participant information template and informed consent template.
Set-up and data collection
I conducted the usability tests online via Zoom on my Laptop. I conducted my evaluations in a quiet space at home to avoid distractions. I asked each participant to share their screen during the session and used Zoom’s record feature to capture the screen and audio as a downloadable mp4 file.
Step 4:
Data Analysis
This step involved transcribing the raw data for each of the tests and presenting the data in tables.
Once the data had been analysed and presented, I prioritised the key usability and UX issues discovered. Doing this, helped with identifying and justifying the recommendations made.
Step 5:
Recommendations
The findings presented provided a clear basis to deliver the recommendations outlined in this section. I used a convergent thinking approach to focus on solutions.
These recommendations are justified using the insights gained from the analysed data were prioritised to assess the key UX and Usability issues.
- Enable users to donate to a team member’s page from the logged-in section of their profile page.
- Enable users to: “Create a team” or “Find a team” from the “Thank you for creating a new page” page that users see after signing up and clicking “skip” on the pop-up.
- Enable users to edit their fundraising target from the “your existing pages page”
- Add more copy to the Swim22 landing page that informs the user of what to expect upon signing up.
Step 6:
Conclusion
Upon reflection of all the sections presented in this report, it seems compelling to suggest that addressing the key usability issues, particularly the ones outlined in the recommendations would have a positive impact on the overall UX of the site. This conclusion is justified by the USERindex data analysis. It can be inferred from these results that improving the Ease of Use dimension would significantly improve the USERindex score. As a quantitative method was used to measure the overall UX, this conclusion could be tested in the future once the recommendations have been implemented to see if the score increases.