usability testing for Guts UK
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Overview
Guts UK is a charity that is focused on conditions of the digestive system, including focus areas of the gut, liver, and pancreas. The mission of the charity is to provide expert information, raise public awareness, and fund life-changing and life-saving research. They do
this by funding medical research into the digestive system, which leads to better diagnoses and treatments for people living with digestive conditions.
Guts UK was looking to better understand how users interact with the information presented on their website, gutscharity.co.uk. A qualitative research website evaluation was designed and conducted in collaboration with the Guts UK team to discover usability issues along key user journeys on their website.
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Research objectives included:
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Discover the clarity of the homepage and user impression of the website.
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Discover the overall UX of the website.
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Discover how easy it is to compare different types of information and content on the website.
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Understand the user experience of key user journeys on the website.
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Discover the ease of findability of research on the website.
PROJECT PROCESS & DETAILS
PLANNING & RESEARCH
The planning process began by defining the purpose of the evaluation. Made in collaboration with the Guts UK team, the evaluation brief outlined five goals to address:
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Homepage Clarity—discover if users clearly understand what the charity is and what can be done on the website from looking at the homepage.
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Overall UX—investigate the overall UX of the website.
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Information Page Comparison—discover what users think of the “Information Hub Page” for pancreatitis in contrast to the traditional pancreatitis informational pages, including differences in donation journeys and the perceived relationship between the pages.
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Key User Journeys—investigate the usability of user journeys to support Guts UK.
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Research Findability—investigate the findability of information about the research that Guts UK funds.
In order to uncover insights for these 5 goals, usability testing was conducted on the website with 5 users, who were asked to complete tasks that focused on the above goals. Tests were conducted in person.
DATA ANALYSIS
Research data was analyzed using a variety of methods, including coding the transcripts, affinity mapping, compiling usability issues in a rainbow spreadsheet, and a SUPR-Q analysis.
The rainbow spreadsheet helped to identify common usability issues experienced across multiple participants. This gave an indication of the severity level of each usability issue. Recommendations were developed for the top 4 most severe usability issues and reported back to Guts UK.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Four major findings and recommendations were delivered back to Guts UK:
1. Improve the findability of the research being funded and conducted on the site—A majority (4 out of 5) of participants had trouble finding the research Guts UK is funding, and felt that the information presented did not meet their expectations.
2. Focus the expandable tabs on the research page about research instead of doctors—All 5 participants expressed confusion about how prominently the doctors are highlighted on the website.
3. Build out the content on the Fundraise for Guts UK page around how to get involved—Many users (3 out of 5) encountered problems on this user journey, most of which had to do with the information structure on the page.
4. Combine past and future events under the News & Events navigation tab—Multiple participants (3 out of 5) expected to find upcoming events under this tab because they saw the word “Event” in the global navigation and followed it—not realizing there was a separate events section within one of the dropdown menus.
REFLECTION
While this project was conducted for Guts UK, I did not have access to the Guts UK team as a student. All communication ran through my professor. I believe the research process could have been improved by having myself as the researcher work more closely with the client. This was prevented by the nature of the coursework, but closely
collaborating across teams would be greatly beneficial in the future. Goals could be more aligned and tasks could be more tailored to encompass a full understanding of the website. That said, the tasks in this evaluation did produce a thorough examination of how users interact with the Guts UK website, yielding solid results with recommendations to move forward.