The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's website serves as an access point to a variety of museum-goers. Our team of researchers was approached by the museum to conduct a usability study of their website. We conducted a Moderated Remote Usability Test that aimed to improve the Education section of the desktop version of the website. This improvement is intended to cater to K-12 educators who utilize the website for educational materials and book museum visits for their students.
RESEARCH PROCESS
7 Weeks
KICKOFF MEETING
Project Brief
The kick-off meeting helped define the scope and research goals of the usability study. We virtually met with our Clients from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History via Zoom, to identify problem areas.
Meeting the team at Smithsonian over Zoom
"We want to get feedback on the usability and usefulness of these specific school program pages and the resources on them."
Keeping in mind the client's expectations and technical limitations, we identified our target users, scope, and the following goals :
Target Users
K-12 Educators
Scope
Conducted Moderated Remote Usability Studies with 6 participants , testing “School programs” and “Teaching Resources” in the Education section.
Goals
Analyze educators' behavior with Teaching Resources and School Program categories.
Find qualitative information about educators' interaction with resources, features, and materials on the website.
Propose recommendations to improve the user experience of the education section.
TESTING PREPARATION
Formulating Task
A Moderated Usability Study, the gold standard, was chosen as our research method to ensure quality findings on user interaction with the website.
We designed the following tasks to explore some core features of the education section, like searching for resources and registering for a school program. And we conducted pilot tests to improve the defined tasks.
Task 1
Explore what the website has to offer for educational purposes.
What are your thoughts about this?
Task 2
"You want to conduct a lesson about science with the students in your class."
Explore the lesson resources relevant to your classes.
One of your colleagues has asked for help with a lesson about dinosaurs. Find a resource on the topic that would be suitable for the students belonging to the grade you teach.
Task 3
"You would like your students to experience what the museum has to offer."
Find an appropriate museum program that might interest your students.
Register for a time in the next month (You do not have to go through with the registration)
RECRUITMENT PARTICIPANTS
6 Participants
We recruited 6 participants (K-12 educators) for the study by the Smithsonian Museum from their database of educators and our personal resources.
Recruiting was the lengthiest step due to the niche target users. The team at Smithsonian helped by sending participation request emails to 150 educators from their database, recruiting 4 participants. We also reached out to educators through our contacts and recruited 2 more participants.
USABILITY TESTING
Moderate Remote User Testing
Due to time and location constraints, we conducted remote moderated tests over Zoom.
Conducting a usability test as Moderator
Each session lasted for about half an hour, the users verbalized their thoughts as they moved through the interface during each task. This process helped gain insights into user behavior in a controlled environment. We had the advantage to ask users about their pain points while they were experiencing the website.
DATA ANALYSIS
Findings
Through the questionnaires and tasks, we discovered findings for educator preferences with the content on the website, as well as identified usability issues in the education section.
Very informative and resourceful, but a hassle to find
Over half of the participants had difficulty experience with using the sidebar and verbally expressed the hope to improve the design.
Participants easy to get confusion due to the search and filter features for teaching resources.
Currently, the Program Registration Calendar, while functional, presents more information to individual users than participants would want or need.
How we IMPROVE
Solutions
What could be improved?
Considering both severity level and feasibility to fix, three specific issues and their recommendations were provided to the client. Most of these issues can be addressed by establishing consistency, text hierarchy, and distinct call to actions.
1. Improve overall usability of the "Sidebar(Menu)"
Despite the fact that users usually start scrolling as soon as their page loads, content at the first of the page is still very important. The sidebar opens up then close quickly that is not prominent enough in relation to the other headings on the page, so the users will be easy to ignore the navigation bar. Long scrolling can make navigation problematic for users, and sidebars are not consistent across the museum’s website, and it’s hard to realize using “click the label” to enable backward navigation.
Keeping the sidebar open for ~10 seconds
To enable users to use the navigation functions better, we recommend redesigning the interaction for the sidebar. Maybe keeping the sidebar open for ~10 seconds after the education page loads gives users time to browse content.
The sidebar follows user’s scrolling
In order to adjust the sidebar for scrolling, the obvious solution for this problem is to make a sticky navigation menu. It’s best to keep the navigation persistently visible so that navigating to different areas of the site or app is fast and easy for users.
Adding a “backward icon” in the sidebar
We also recommend helping users to use the sidebar more easily by adding a “backward icon” in the sidebar.
2. Improve the discoverability and usability of search and filter features for teaching resources.
Lack of information during the long lag between filter application and search results frustrated users. Some users missed the filters, and the search bar for resources was missed by all participants.
Added heading for Filter and redesigned Search Bar
Adding a Filter Heading that reads “Filter By” and an Icon. Redesigning the search bar to be more discoverable.
Informing users of loading results through an inactive screen
Adding an inactive loading results page.
Informing users of updated search results, and allowing different ways to clear filters and search bar
Adding a Search Results heading to show the results are updated and a subheading informing users of the number of results. Separate reset buttons for search and filters.
3. Decluttering the Registration Calendar
4/6 participants were strongly inclined towards registering for school programs. Users generally not searching for more than one student category at a time. Seeing sessions with only wait-listed availability can be frustratingn.
Filtering out full sessions and irrelevant Grade groups
Re-purpose the Calendar Legend to allow user’s to select the grade levels they wish to view times-slots for. Add an option enable Wait-Listed sessions to be filtered out.
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