Hope Community

Website Usability Evaluation

TL;DR

Summary: Hope Community is a non profit in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, MN. They provide many services to the community, including rental housing as well as numerous programs such as community gardens, community wealth-building, arts, and youth programs. Hope Community leadership wanted to learn more about how the site could be better leveraged to meet the needs of its audience. A heuristic analysis and usability study was performed and found several themes and opportunities for improvement in order to more effectively communicate Hope Communities services

Tools: Google Slides & Sheets, Otter.ai, FigJam

Deliverables:

Evaluation plan and test script

Findings and recommendations report

Usability review

Role: UX Researcher

Methods: Heuristic analysis, evaluative research, generative research, remote moderated usability testing, think aloud protocol, affinity diagramming

The Problem

The current Hope Community website is meant to communicate general information about the organization, such as contact information, program overviews, and reports/newsletters, however resources are limited in their ability to update the site and it often takes time to add new information. Hope Community leadership wanted to learn more about current issues on the site, including how it could be better leveraged to meet the needs of its audiences, before considering significant modifications or a website redesign

 

The Research Process

Planning

  • First, exploratory research was completed using a heuristic analysis of the site in order to detect baseline usability problems

  • Next, an evaluative research was performed: a test script was designed and written to gauge human expectations against the current state of the site

 
 

Goals

  • Hope Community’s goals for their website include:

    • Communicate Hope’s goals, mission, and values

    • Provide information on how to participate in Hope programming

    • Appeal to donors by communicating the work efforts and resulting impact

  • Goals of the usability study include:

    • Identifying potential pain points or design concerns to be addressed in order to improve efficiency and end-user satisfaction as well as to meet Hope Community’s goal they had set for their site

    • To provide stakeholders with prioritization of areas with the greatest potential for improvement

User Testing

  • Study structure:

    • 6 participants were recruited for user testing

    • Each participated in a 30-minute usability testing session

    • Methods include think-aloud protocol and moderated sessions with observers/notetakers

  • Users were asked for their general impressions of the site and were also given 5 scenarios to complete as they navigated the site. These scenarios were as follows:

    1. Scenario 1: You drove by the Hope Community building on Franklin Ave and you want to find out more about what the organization does including their goals, mission, and values. You Google Hope Community and it brings you to this website

    2. Scenario 2: You want to volunteer at Hope Community so you go to their website to get involved 

    3. Scenario 3: Imagine you are a community member looking at the programs and services offered through Hope Community

    4. Scenario 4: You’re looking to make a donation to the organization

    5. Scenario 5: You have a friend who is looking for affordable housing. You go to the Hope Community website to see if there are any available units

User testing in progress

Data Synthesis & Analysis

  • Raw data from user research was first compiled in Google Sheets, then transferred to a shared FigJam board

  • From there, affinity diagramming was used and several themes emerged

Raw data from Google Sheets

Data synthesis in FigJam

Findings & Recommendations

  • Several areas of strength were found in Hope Community’s current site:

    • Imagery: the images used on the website emphasized Hope’s work and instilled a sense of trust in their work

    • Community: participants immediately recognized that Hope Community is an established organization with deep roots in the community

    • Donations: participants found the donation process to be efficient with little friction

Areas that had opportunities for improvement include:

  • Home page & first impressions

  • Navigation & information structures

  • Language & jargon

  • Scale & consistency

Within the themes, specific recommendations were made. The following are action items that were given to Hope Community:

  • Edit the landing page to reduce clutter, emphasize Hope Community, and draw in users

  • Simplify and group categories of information together for an easy flow through the site

  • Add buttons for action items will simplify users’ journeys and help them find what they are looking for

  • Edit language to be clear and descriptive. Include “at a glance” sections that summarize content quickly

  • Include qualitative data (such as number of people housed, number of program participants, etc)

  • Reduce size of images so they can be seen in conjunction with associated text

  • Standardize font sizes and styles used throughout site

The Takeaways

  • Hope Community is an established nonprofit with deep roots in their community 

  • Their current website had several areas of opportunity where design could be leveraged to better meet the needs of their users

  • Both evaluative and generative research were used to identify main pain points

  • After data was collected, synthesized, and analyzed a recommendations report was given to the organization with 7 action items that will help their site better communicate their mission and recruit program participants, volunteers, and donors