Challenge
Understand the needs of Kalamazoo College's Site Content Editors (SCEs: faculty and staff at Kalamazoo College who build and maintain department websites or personal blogs using WordPress) through user research to propose a new design for the WordPress Help website.
Project Overview
1. Research Phase I: Usability Test Questions, KPIs & Metrics, Participants, Data, Insights
2. Research Phase II: Card Sort, Participants, Data, Insights
3. Prototype
Research Phase I
Usability Test Questions
Background and subjective satisfaction questions were asked to gauge SCEs usage of and experience with the original website. SCEs also completed seven tasks during the usability test which followed an interview guide.
Key Performance Indicators & Metrics
Key performance indicators for the website include user satisfaction, efficiency, user-friendliness, and for it to be informative. Metrics measured include subjective satisfaction, task success rate, time-on-task, and if SCEs had any questions regarding the original website design.
Participants
Participants were six volunteer Site Content Editors from a range of departments at Kalamazoo College.
Data
Research shows that participants do not use the WordPress Help website often because they do not find it helpful, however, most are fairly confident with using WordPress to build their department websites.
Participants think the website's Home page looks clean and has a good balance of image to text. The content list is helpful for SCEs when navigating, and can easily access the Accessibility page because it has its own tab in the menu.
Participants, however, are confused by the Getting Started and How To Instructions tabs and do not know which tab to explore to find the information they're looking for. They are also unsure about which information, such as the Announcements, is relevant to them. Participants expressed that they would like more visuals and tutorials, a search bar, and that its difficult to understand WordPress terminology.
Participants are 83% satisfied with the original website and had the most trouble completing Task 3 successfully and in a timely manner because they were unsure what the key information (i.e., Footer) was in the task as well as where to find it on the website.
Insights
The research suggests that SCEs would benefit most from one main How To Instruction page (as opposed to both the Getting Started and How To Instruction pages), a search bar, more visuals for learning, and a redesigned Home page that directs them to the search bar and emphasizes information relevant to them.
Research Phase II
Card Sort
The next phase of research entails a card sort to understand SCEs mental models to construct the information architecture for the one main How To Instruction page. SCEs were asked background questions and completed the virtual open card sort followed by subjective questions to understand SCEs reasoning.
Participants
Participants were eight volunteer Site Content Editors from a range of departments at Kalamazoo College.
Data
Once again, research shows that participants do not use the WordPress Help website often because they do not find it helpful, however, most are fairly confident with using WordPress to build their department websites.
Participants are confused about the difference between certain cards and what elements specific to WordPress are. Further, participants that are new to WordPress are not in tune with the terminology yet.
Participants tended to group login information, forms, building pages, and website features together respectively during their card sort.
In terms of trends, participants organized information based on editing abilities, ascribed non-descriptive titles to categories, and organized many cards into one category. Each of these trends pose a problem as they create less intuitive information architectures. Solutions include organizing information in an equally visible manner, creating guides that walk SCEs through common editing phases, and titling categories with descriptive names and a short definition.
Insights
The research suggests that SCEs would benefit from defining categories for what they are by using descriptive titles, clearly delineating between similar information, and providing a range of options for users to find information such as a Search Bar, content list or visual display (grid) of categories, and Guides that take users through a step-by-step flow that answers their most prominent questions.
Prototype
This prototype created with Figma visually demonstrates the proposed solutions and insights gathered from the research.
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