Christine Tenny
School of Visual Arts
Examining the Usability of their Library's Updated Site
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Team: Pratt Institute
Client: School of Visual Arts Library
Role: User Test, Qualitative Data Analysis, Usability Report, Copy Editing, Presentation
Type: Desktop
Timeline: 4 Weeks, Nov. - Dec. 2020
client
The School of Visual Arts is a leading institution in design, art, and creative professions, with more than 1000 faculty and 7000 students in its 31 educational programs. While the school is more than 70 years old, its library has been around since 1978 and serves the interests of both faculty and students in their pursuit of collaborative, academic research in its both locations, Main Library and Library West.
Due to COVID-19, these in-person locations have limited hours so the library's website is central to serving the student and faculty on an ongoing and accessible basis virtually.
about
The library website recently undergone a migration to a new platform in order to be integrated with the rest of the SVA website. Overall the project’s goal was to identify the ways that SVA library’s redesigned site could maximize its efficiency and accessibility before the library’s former website (to the left) fully migrates off the SVA platform.
DESIGNING THE STUDY
Within four weeks, our study was divided into phases, in which the scope, participant recruitment, methodology, and analysis were completed.
Client Meeting
Study Design + Recruitment
User
Testing
Data Analysis
Final Report + Presentation
scope
In our client meeting, we learned the library wanted to provide its users with an efficient, clear user experience when finding and interacting with their various features and services.
The client's purpose of these user tests were to explore and collect users’ feedback about the updated navigation, functionality, and overall usability in comparison with their former site’s design.
participant
recruitment
For effective feedback, our team's recruitment strategy aimed at the library's most frequent users: faculty, staff and students. We conducted eight (8) user tests and had an equal division between the three (3) user groups:
3 Staff | 2 Staff | 3 Students
tasks
Our team decided to build the study around the four (4) most used features on the site, in order to find clear usability issues and provide the most effective recommendations.
1. SVA Navigation Bar
2. Library's General Information
3. Catalog Search Bar
4. Services & Forms Section
Task #1
Find the Library’s site within the overall SVA site.
Task #2
Identify the Main Library address, hours of operation on Mondays, and their phone number.
Task #3
Search the catalog for a recent research article.
Task #4
Find out how easily one could reserve a room in the Main Library (For student participants) or find out how easily one could locate and schedule a library instruction class (For Staff and Faculty participants).
Methodology
We examined the website’s usability by performing remote usability tests; this method afforded our team to meet SVA's testing goals and analyze the findings considering the strict quarantine regulations due to COVID-19.
We grouped ourselves into testing duos—a notetaker and an interviewer— we administered each test through the video call platform, Zoom.
Each user interview was allotted sixty (60) minutes; we allowed our participants to freely interact with the new website to complete each task and asked them to give their honest feedback along the way. Throughout the process, the interviewer then posed questions and identified any unique user behaviors that may uncover the usability issues.
Additionally for each user test, we conducted the following:
pre-test survey
To capture the user's preliminary demographic information.
post-test survey
To create a measurement of the user's experience per task, based on the site's features.
pre-test
questionnaire
To understand the user's relationship to the SVA site and library's various resources.
analysis
Once all the data was collected, our team used three (3) different analysis methods to compile our key findings and synthesize our recommendations.
one-page detailed analysis
customized affinity diagram
post-test survey results
findings
Between the eight participants, there were three areas of improvement for the website: Navigation, Information Architecture, and Functionality. We determined these pivotal insights from three out of the four tasks, since they focused on these website features. The tasks were:
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Task #1: Find the Library’s site within the overall SVA site.
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Task #2: Identify the Main Library address, hours of operation on Mondays, and their phone number.
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Task #4: Find out how easily one could reserve a room in the Main Library (For student participants) or find out how easily one could locate and schedule a library instruction class (For Staff and Faculty participants).
From these tasks, our team noticed the consistency in the users’ responses to the post-test questions were:
a.) most were unsure whether they completed the tasks successfully;
b.) most assigned the task with a complexity of three or more;
c.) they felt the task took more than the appropriate amount of time to complete (more than 5 seconds).
recommendations
SVA should consider the recommendations listed below, like changing the navigation path for the website, reducing some information by replacing them with more visual iconography, and should consider reorganizing the website content. These changes will promote better user engagement, and as a result, this will bear fruit of satisfied users and a more accessible and functionally friendly website.
