The UX service recently helped the New Students team run their own usability test on an updated version of their website.

Background

Back in May, the UX service received a request for help from the owners of the New Students website.

This website contains essential information and guidance for students in their first few weeks of university, such as how to apply for a student card, or how to pay fees. This content is really important to get students off to a good start, and how easily they can find this information affects their first impressions of the University.

Screenshot of the New Students website homepage.

In preparation for their website’s migration to EdWeb2, the New Students team had vastly reduced their website content. They had printed out all the pages across their website to see the volume of content and identify duplicate or unnecessary information that could be deleted.

The team now wanted to check that their newly trimmed website could be easily navigated by the website’s target audience.

Initial consultancy call – understanding the required outcomes

After receiving their request for advice, we met with the owners of the New Students website. This was essential for us to understand the context of the website and work out how we in the UX service could help.

Some of the questions we asked the team were:

• What are the main goals of your site and service?
• Who is the target audience for your site?
• Are there any deadlines you are working to?

UX recommendations

Based on this information, we suggested best next steps and provided options of how our service could support them.

In this case, we recommended that a short round of usability testing on the New Students website would provide the most value to the website team, given their goals and timeframes. This would help them learn whether visitors to the site could navigate easily to relevant information, in time for a launch before Welcome Week.

The process of usability testing usually involves:

• Planning the test and script;
• Recruiting participants;
• Running individual testing sessions;
• Analysing results;
• Prioritising next steps.

We presented two options to the team to help them with this process:

• Hire the UX service to manage the majority of these tasks and present a final report with further recommendations, or:
• Plan and conduct research themselves, with coaching from the UX service.

The team chose the second option. This required more time commitment from them, but there were several advantages to running their own research study:

• The process of planning the study helped them identify and prioritise the most important goals for users of their website.
• Facilitating their own research sessions showed them immediately where people struggled to use their site, allowing them to make informed changes more quickly than if they’d waited for another team to report back.
• They gained a clear understanding of why they needed to make certain design changes on the website. This evidence could be shared with other website stakeholders and new staff.
• Encouragement and guidance from the UX service gave them the confidence and skills to keep testing their content in the future.

Usability testing the updated website

First, we helped the team create a test script that was based on 10 key tasks that the target audience was likely to want to do while visiting the website. Study participants were then asked to complete these tasks.

For example:

• “You are new to the city and have lived here for a few weeks. You are trying to register with a GP practice but you can’t find one that is accepting new patients. What should you do?”
• “You are an international student and have secured a place to stay in University-managed accommodation. Due to various delays, you will be arriving in Edinburgh later than planned and will miss Welcome Week. Who should you inform?”

We also looked at Google Analytics data to validate that the most viewed pages would be included in the testing.

We then helped the team run an initial pilot test, not only to check that the tasks made sense, but to give them experience of facilitating a study in an encouraging environment.

For the main study, the New Students team recruited five participants from a pool of current students – this was a user group similar to their target audience. Each participant was asked to talk through the new version of the homepage and attempt all 10 tasks using the site.

Junior members of the UX service assisted with running the sessions and notetaking, which was helpful in developing their skills and experience in user research.

Review and findings

After all the testing was complete, we met with the New Students team to hear about the results.

Feedback from participants gave them reassurance that the website structure was clear and helpful, and that certain areas were well sign-posted. From observing behaviour while participants navigated the site, the team also spotted usability issues, such as:

• Participants didn’t know what the heading ‘Supporters of new students’ meant.
• Participants were confused by the difference between sections labelled ‘Get ready for university…’ and ‘The start of university’.
• Information about timetabling was difficult to find.

This helped them identify and prioritise a list of evidence-based changes they could make for improvement, some in the short term and some for the future.

Reflections

From their initial enquiry in May, the team had completed testing and created their own recommendations by the end of June, showing that usability testing can be a quick and easy process!

It was great to upskill the New Students team to carry out usability tests by themselves and to see them learn more about their website. This helped them to appreciate the value of using usability testing to make evidence-informed changes to their content.

The experience also provided a learning opportunity for newer staff members of our service to develop confidence in running user research studies, which they can now apply to future projects.

Further information

Explore the New Students website for yourself:

New Students

For more information about the UX service and our work, visit our website:

User Experience (UX) Service

If you have a project you’d like our help with, please contact user-experience@ed.ac.uk.