Minnesota Women’s Press
Minnesota Women’s Press is a community-based journal that seeks to amplify the powerful voices of marginalized women (cis and trans) and nonbinary people, to inspire action steps and leadership moving toward justice and healing.
Overview
We performed a usability analysis for Minnesota Women’s Press on their existing mobile website in order to identify ways to improve the product experience for users.
KEY DELIVERABLES
PROCESS WORK
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MY ROLE
UX Researcher | Usability Testing Moderator & Observer | UX Designer
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METHODS
Heuristic Analysis | Usability Testing | Think-Aloud Protocol | Affinity Diagramming | Low Fidelity Wireframes
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TOOLS
Figma | FigJam | Otter.ai | GoogleSheets | Keynote | Zoom | Pen & Paper
SUMMARY
Key Points
Problem: Identify ways to improve the product experience for users of Minnesota Women's Press' mobile website
Process: Working as a 5-person team, we reviewed the evaluated the existing product and experience using internal (heuristic analysis) and external (usability testing, think-aloud protocol, scenario-based tasks) methods in order to identify things working well and opportunities for improvement
Findings: Opportunities for increased discoverability and hierarchy for greater user awareness and comprehension, as well as tag system restructuring for improved navigation
Solution: Moving into independent work, I developed a findings and recommendations report with written suggestions paired with annotated low-fidelity wireframes for client delivery
Challenges: In order to facilitate intentional collaboration in a remote setting, our team used virtual co-working sessions, along with a coded system for note-taking, to help our keep both our goals and processes focused, aligned, and organized
Reflection: This case study emphasized the importance of adaptability and resourcefulness, practicing new tools and processes for remote collaboration and moderated user sessions (coded data repositories and team affinity diagramming, technologies for mobile website testing, understanding different working styles in the remote versus in-person settings)
PROBLEM
Problem Statement
Minnesota Women’s Press provides a platform for the voices of everyday women (cis and trans) and nonbinary people through community-based journalism and person-first narratives, reporting, and conversations. Their website serves as both a resource for publication content and a channel through which visitors can take action and get involved in community engagements. Minnesota Women’s Press approached us with the goals of increasing donation, subscription, and article click rates; assessing the messaging of Chagemakers Alliance (a recently-created group intended to facilitate member discussion and action); and improving user comprehension and the overall mobile experience.
Minnesota Women’s Press creates content for both print and web. Their current website (pictured here) is intended to serve as a resource for both published media and community engagement.
Minnesota Women’s Press does not have a separate mobile app, but many users access their website via a mobile device (sample mobile view above).
Reviewing the Existing Experience
Based on the review of a generative research report prepared on Minnesota Women’s Press, we established three primary tasks (donating to Minnesota Women’s press, joining Changemakers Alliance, and finding a story of interest) on which to perform a heuristic analysis, focused on the mobile experience. From this analysis, we identified several prioritized issue areas.
Primary Priorities
Lack of visibility of information on Changemakers Alliance
Lack of hierarchy and consistency in terms of textual content, overall verbiage, navigation conventions
Lack of transparency and trust with regard to the donation page and process
Secondary Priorities
Overall information architecture and disconnect between menu navigation and actual website structure
We received a generative research report prepared based on client intake information, which included information related to topics such as mission, goals, user groups, tasks, competitors, and basic analytics.
Each member of the design team performed a heuristic analysis of the existing website, noting usability issues for each primary task.
Usability Testing
We conducted 10 usability testing sessions, using the think-aloud protocol and moderator-guided scenario-based tasks, focusing on the priority areas identified during our internal usability review.
Data from usability sessions was collected in a team data repository (Google Sheets, participant P1 pictured here), structured by scenario/task and color-coded based on positive, negative, neutral, and meaningful quote material.
We used affinity diagramming to process and analyze our data, organizing observations by scenario/task and coding by participant and observer, in order to visualize patterns and trends across sessions.
Findings & Opportunities
Based on the synthesis of our usability research, I identified several positive areas as well as opportunity areas.
Things Working Well
Ease of navigation to broad topics (e.g., donate, subscribe) due to high visibility in main hamburger menu navigation
Prior familiarity with Minnesota Women’s Press fosters inherent trust in the organization and mobile website
Ability to search website for content as a safety net for user navigation
Opportunity Areas
Increase discoverability of Changemakers Alliance for greater user awareness
Restructure tag categorization system for improved navigation
Increase hierarchy and page organization for enhanced comprehension
0/10
participants were able to find information about (CALL)
“I expected that when I clicked on this that it would lead me to all of the articles on policy and politics.”
-Participant P1
5/10
participants had difficulty identifying all of the donation methods on the “donate” page
SOLUTION
Recommendations
In the context of the prioritized opportunity areas, I developed and delivered a findings and recommendations report for the client, documenting both written descriptions and annotated low-fidelity wireframes of proposed solutions.
The addition of a menu navigation option, revised verbiage focused on “community,” and the creation of an individual page (as opposed to article) with an explicit “join” button may help to increase the discoverability of Changemakers Alliance as well as user awareness of and ease of access to the group.
Displaying full listings of article tags, indicating tags applied as filters, consistent verbal and visual treatment of tags throughout website, and restructured navigation categories may help users to more easily navigate content to find additional, relevant articles.
Increased hierarchy, minimizing visual attention on irrelevant information, adding icons for navigational cues, and optimizing the website for mobile viewing may help to enhance user comprehension, increase scannabiltiy, and decrease user cognitive load.
CONCLUSION
Deliverables
Next Steps
Based on the findings and recommendations report, proposed solutions to prioritized issues could be build out in higher fidelity, ultimately leading to an interactive prototype for user evaluation and usability testing in an iterative fashion.
Moving forward, lower priority problems revealed in usability reviews and testing could be explored, with potential solutions visualized.
With the findings and recommendations report in the hands of the client, it is up to Minnesota Women’s press to review and prioritize the proposed solutions from each member of the design team for further development.
Key Learnings & Takeaways
We used combined internal design team and external user research methods to develop a focused approach to conducting a usability evaluation for Minnesota Women’s Press.
We practiced synthesizing research data collected across multiple participants and multiple observers, using a coded system facilitate organization and accuracy in user session processing.
We delivered a final report to the client, balancing highlighting both things working well and addressing usability problems, providing research findings for context and framing issues as opportunity areas supported by proposed solutions.