____ PROBLEM

____ DESIGN PROCESS

We followed a simple Design Thinking process which emphasizes on understanding user needs, evaluating them, mapping design solutions, validating the designs by conducting usability tests and integrating the feedback. Key learning points from each phase were used in the next phase to make better design decisions. The design and testing phases are in a loop to justify the user centric design process. 

____ DISCOVERY

Conducting user research to understand user needs, behaviors and common practices.

There are 3 main user groups: Students, Faculties and Alumni. Data collected from user interviews helped to map major tasks performed, common problems experienced, and user expectations.

Talk more to understand more.

We interviewed fellow UMBC students, faculty members and alumni. Some participants were regular users while some were unfamiliar or had never used the website before. We also spoke with the Ms Erin McGonigle, Director of Bookstore. Talking with the client helps to understand main objectives, motivation behind the website, how they want the website to be percived as and what areas are they seeking improvements.

Following are some quotes from user and client interviews

“I mostly use the website for either renting my textbook or to check new logo merchandise” —- Student

“I prefer checking the library before going to bookstore website” —- Student

“I’ve only checked the website once when I wanted to buy one of those logo sweatshirts. I didn’t end up buying. The in-store experience was better than online” —- Alumnus

“Bookstore website facilitates students and faculties to buy/rent textbooks and encourages them to buy school merchandise. We would also like to market our food stall Yum Shoppe through the website” —- Client

I was responsible for drafting and planning the interview sessions (user + client). There were mild variations in the interview patterns for each user group, as I had included some specific question targeted to particular user group. After interviews we moved forward with conducting Contextual Inquiry where we give users some tasks to perform and we make running notes based on observations. We encourage participants to think aloud while interacting.

Using the data from interviews and the notes I made, I created the following user personas:

Gaining more insights- competitive analysis, task analysis

We decided to see bookstore websites from other schools to better understand market trends. Websites from 5 other universities were studied and analysed based on their information architecture, content layout, language style and visuals.

Results from competitive analysis 

• Easy navigation

• Attractive UI

• Easy checkout

• Efficient search

____ DEFINE

1) Primary users are students

2) Primary tasks performed are buying/renting books and buying merchandise

Defining user and business goals

Considering only the user needs is not enough. The design should be at the intersection of user and business goals. The activities carried out above helped us to determine user needs and pain points where as the interview with the client helped us to write the business goals. Writing down business goals helps with design decisions and also lays a foundation for prospective future work

____ EVALUATE

Conducting Heuristic Evaluation

A heuristic evaluation is a usability inspection method that helps to identify usability problems in interface design. It involves examining the interface and judging its compliance with recognized usability principles. Principles used to evaluate are visibility of content, consistency, feedback for actions, using real world conventions, logical information hierarchy, error prevention and handling and ease of use. We conducted this evaluation based on Nielsen Normans ten heuristic evaluation principles.

____ DESIGN

Design focus areas: navigation and homepage redesign

Heuristics evaluation helped us to be sure about our findings from the research. Majority of the users had trouble with navigation and clumsy homepage design.

Other areas to improve:

• Consistency in layout and hierarchy

• Maintain the nomenclature throughout the website

• Improve navigation by properly arranging the tabs as per the use

• Make the website accessible so that all users can use

Key points to consider: Low maintenance, no drastic changes.

We had to keep in mind that the client doesn’t have a dedicated team to make updates. While talking with Erin, we found that she has basic knowledge of html (self-learned, how amazing!) which makes it easy for her to make necessary changes like changing the banner image, or adding/deleting new books or merch. We also had to keep in mind that the website had to look like it evolved from the original and not make user feel like they are using something completely different.

Design-Test loop begins!

____ SOLUTION

We studied UMBC’s brand and style guide before designing the final prototypes.

Navigation

Merchandise header has many sub categories for user to select so I put a drop menu for it, and to facilitate easy sign-in/ sign-up process, I put a drop down menu for User Login.

What I learned:

1. Integrating feedback is very important

2. Balancing user and business goals

3. Communication is the key!

Conclusion and Future Prospects

I learned a great deal about user research and usability testing from this project. My favorite phase was the one where there was interaction with the user, be it for the interviews or testing. I enjoyed using the eye tracking system and all the challenges that came with installing and using the data! I also learned to manage oodles of data, clustering it and finding meaningful design solutions.

Future prospects would be to enable universal search feature, make the website accessible and adding some fun interactions. We would also like to see the mobile version.

Thank you for reading!

Other Projects: