AMERICAN HUMANE

OVERVIEW

American Humane is a nonprofit organization and committed to ensuring the safety, welfare, and well-being of animals. This is a summative evaluation intended to improve user experience on the American Humane Website by identifying user needs and goals by conducting usability research.

The purpose of this study is to deliver proposed solutions and accessible methods to increase user experience on:

  • Donation information-seeking process

  • Adoption information-seeking process

  • Financial information-seeking process

Product type

Non-profit / Usability Study & Recommendations / RWD

Duration

2021

Role

UX Researcher / Designer

Delivery

Stakeholder Analysis / Heuristic Evaluationw / Content Inventory and Audit / User Research / Personas Creation / User Stories / Usability Testing / Lo-fi Prototyping

ACHIEVEMENTS

The proposed solutions have a significant effect on increasing overall user satisfaction. First of all, the participant's average task completion time was at least 50% decreased in the prototype testing. Moreover, participants were able to achieve tasks in all scenarios.

100%

Participants can complete the tasks

50%

Decreased in the task completion time

STUDY PROCESS

This study took apart into three different phases and the user data were collected along with each phase.

STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS

With the purpose of assessing how the interests of stakeholders should be addressed in a project plan, policy, program, or other action, this research collects the related information on the Staff & Board page on the American Humane website. In the light of gathering information about stakeholders' attitudes and needs, project owners, product designers, web developers, and authors contribute a high impact on the project. Hence, their needs and goals should be prioritized.

HEURISTIC EVALUATION

A heuristic evaluation was conducted to measure usability of user interface and go through a checklist of criteria to find flaws. The major issues were identified as following:

  • Lack system status on pages

  • Meaning of the words is unclear for users

  • Some pages is too long to control and read on the mobile version

  • The interaction is inconsistent when clicking contents with same design pattern

  • Article pages are inconsistently labeled. Many articles place tags but some did not

  • Did not give an instruction when people get into a error page

CONTENT INVENTORY AND AUDIT

A list of content inventory and audit was established before conducting user research. This list help to oversee every piece of digital content in the study scope on the website.

USER RESEARCH

With the purpose of discovering demographics and psychographics of current or potential users of the site, the survey was conducted from September 12 to 16. Demographics and psychographic highlights for 5 respondents include:

Personas and User Stories Creation

As a report by the user research, three personas were built to demonstrate users's characteristics, expectation, goals of the American Humane website. The picture shows an example of one persona that was created.

USABILITY TESTING

Representative participants of the users of the American Humane website were recruited from the researcher personal networks. These sessions were conducted in-person at ASU poly campus. Participants take approximately 1 hour to complete whole testing session.

Goal of Usability Testing

With the view of the previous data, the following questions should be observed in the usability test :

  • Do people know where can find the program page?
  • What kind of animal rescue article people are interested in?
  • Do people know where can find privacy policy information?
  • Do people know where can make a donation?
  • Do people know where can find the dog/cat adoption information?
  • Do people know links for articles that are clickable?
  • Do people know the banner of adoption shelter is clickable?
  • Do people know where can find financial information?
  • Do people understand the IRS Form 990 is about the tax information?

Usability Testing Materials

To conduct the useability test on the published site smoothly and keep the testing process in order, the following materials were developed.

USABILITY TESTING RESULTS

Overall, in the usability research, all participants consider some words on the menu and contents are hard to navigate and understand. Furthermore, participants were unable or take time to find information by accessing banners.

  • 80%

    Participants expect the "History" section provides financial information

  • 100%

    Participants consider the shelter banner is not clear for them to locate on the shelter website

  • 100%

    Participants consider the wording of "Governance" on the submenu is not clear

  • 80%

    Participants click the donation button on the top of the menu

  • 63.6 Seconds

    Average task completion

PROTOTYPE

A medium-fidelity prototype for a redesigned American Humane website was created with key interactivity using Figma. The prototype includes elements such as text, pictures, or form. All pages were designed with a cohesive layout. Hence, it makes users easier to navigate to their target. The pivotal point is that participants can go through all tasks of scenarios with this prototype.

Review Protype on Figma

SOLUTIONS

# Cannot locate pages

Modify information architecture

It would be recommended to add the item of “Animal Adoption” to the menu due to participants cannot locate information about dog/cat adoption. In the prototype version, this solution allows participants able to locate the adoption information directly through the menu. Even though the average time completion from prototype testing was the same as published site testing, participants did not enter the irrelevant page.

# Cannot locate pages

Make a descriptive, concise navigation

Since participants cannot locate tax and financial information, it would be recommended to place descriptive, concise navigation for solving those issues. For example, in the published site testing, 2 out of 5 participants cannot locate the tax form. The average task completion time is 120 seconds. These phenomena are attributed to the unfamiliarity of the wording of "Government" on the navigation bar. In the prototype version, the wording had been modified to “Financial Accountability”. As a result 92% improvement on average time to complete the task. Thus, it is recommended to simplify the navigation for users targeting key user goals identified in the study.

# Unable or take time to find information by accessing banners

Separate the button and banner

According to the result from task 4 in the published site testing, participants spend 45 seconds finding the donation banner. Moreover, there was 1 participant cannot complete the task. Therefore, this issue was recorded as a blocker Issue, which means it impacts users' goals seriously. In the prototype test, the issue was fixed by separating the button and banner into two sides. This makes the button clear and not be influenced by a fancy background. This solution is also executable to task 5. The average time to complete the task has 67% improvement.

# Confused about 2 type of donation pages

Make the design of the donation page consistent

According to the comment from 3 participants, there are two different donation forms on the published site which makes them confused. Moreover, this issue is not only pointed out by participants but also a result from the Heuristic Evaluation research. Hence, in the prototype version, this issue was fixed by creating a consistent design pattern.

# Inconsistent design guide

Create a design guide for the website

Participants comment that the font size on the site is hard to read. This issue might be a reason for them enter to irrelevant pages when taking tasks. Therefore design guides for the font-size were created as follows:

NEXT STEPS

Overall, this study aimed to ameliorate user experience by conducting quantitative, qualitative, and usability research. The result from the phase of preliminary data collection provides a first glance at the American Humane website. After conducting the published site usability testing, can conclude the major issues of the site are caused by unclear wording on navigation, content, or title. Furthermore, the buttons on banners are not obvious and make users ignore them or spend a lot of time to find them. Fortunately, solutions carry out with prototypes solve those issues.

Additional considerations for improving usability?

The solutions provided on previous pages can resolve major issues that impact users seriously. However, 2 out of 5 participants comment that pictures and their content title are unrelated on the animal rescue page when doing task 1. This issue was not tested in the prototype testing since user flow on the site needs to be improved before conducting visual design. Once the user flow is ameliorated, can observe this issue again. Perhaps the issue does not come from visual design problems. It could be caused by something else.