Role: User Research and Usability Testing
Duration: 2 week (April 17 - May 2, 2023)
Tools: Google Docs and Discord
Hobby Lobby is a retail company based in the United States that specializes in selling art and craft supplies, as well as a variety of hobby-related items. Their product offerings include picture framing, jewelry-making materials, fabrics, floral and wedding supplies, cards and party decorations, baskets, wearable art, home decor, and holiday merchandise.
The extent to which a product can be used by specific users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness (writing surface over time), efficiency (amount of work/time), and satisfaction (hard to measure) in a specified context of use.
Open-Card Sorting = Participants group and create descriptive headings.
System Usability Scale (SUS) = 10-item questionnaire that measure users' perceptions of an interface's usability.
Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) = Participants think aloud while performing a set of tasks.
At the end of the semester we pitch a Usability Test Project Proposal to the class and students had to pick among our classmate what project we wanted to work on for our final usability test project. They was about five group made with four or five members in it. When Lindsay was presenting her Usability Test Project Proposal it was interesting to me as I've never used their website before to shop or went through the store in-person.
Goal:
1. Usability Test Project Proposal
2. Usability Test Project Plan
3. Conducted a Usability Testing on the the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar website
4. Usability Test Report
➜ Nifesimi Adebanwo
➜ Lindsey Smith (Team Lead)
➜ Anneli Nurmi
➜ Immanuel Hinton
➜ Ebony McMillon
Before, we decide on what Usability Testing we wanted to do we had to pitch a Usability Test Proposal. My Usability Test Proposal idea was doing a Usability Testing on TikTok. "TikTok is a social media platform for creating, sharing, and discovering short videos". I wanted to do TikTok because it a an app that everyone uses all the time but not a lot of students picked it of their usability testing final project. My group decide to conducted a Usability Testing on the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar.
To determine whether the current live website's find ability through the navigation bar's department categories required revision and improved organization.
Before, we stated our Usability Testing we created a layout plan on how we will conducted our Usability Testing. The purpose was to provide an overview of our group's plans for the Usability Testing Project. Our Usability Testing Project Plan contain What Is Being Tested?, Who We Will Test, Preparing Our Test Sessions, Tasks for the Users, and Analyze Our Collected Data.
For our Usability Testing on the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar, we decide to use three Research Methods which are the Think Aloud Protocol (TAP), Open-Card Sorting, and System Usability Scale (SUS).
Our participants in our usability study were chosen to offer more detailed feedback on the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar. We had three participants and our participants were not selected based on specific criteria such as age, gender, career, or other relevant aspects. Our participants' input was used to identify any usability difficulties or areas for improvement, and I feel that it's an important element of our usability study process for the Hobby Lobby website. Overall, the thoughts and viewpoints provided by our participants were quite important in order to develop our recommendations.
Requirements:
- Effectively utilizes the Internet
- Over the age of 18
- Experience with Hobby Lobby's website
- Aspiring or proficient hobbyists
Pre-test:
- Have you used the Hobby Lobby website?
- What type of hobbies are you interested/have experience in?
The Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) is a research method in which our participants were asked to explain their ideas while carrying out the task that we provided. We used this method to gather information on our participant's decision-making process, problem-solving skills, and overall experience with the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar website.
We ask our participants to speak aloud as they complete a task so that we can better understand how individuals approach and solve issues, as well as identify areas for improvement. Overall, TAP was an important tool for us in seeking a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes at work when navigating through the website.
Task1: The Fine Touch Colored Pencils 12 Piece Set
Task2: Crystal FX Thick Viscosity GlueSyringes & Tips
For our Open-card sorting, we used the website called uxmetrics.com to create our 40 items cards. Card sorting is a research method used to help evaluate the information on a website (similar to affinity diagramming). We ask our participants to sort out the set of cards into groups that make sense to them and title each group. This process allowed us insight into how our participants perceive and organize information. For our Usability Testing, we decided to do an open sort which means that our participants group and create descriptive headings.
uxmetrics.com
●(pre Card-Sort) - User #1 experienced website frustration
●(postCard-Sort) - User#1 created 14 headers (40 items) and Time: 11:46
● (pre Card-Sort) - User #3 had no website issues
● (PostCard Sort) - User#3 created 11 headers (40 items) and User#3 Time: 9:37
●(pre Card-Sort) User #2 had no website issues
●(Post-CardSort)○User#2 created 7 headers (40 items) and User#2 Time: 11:12
The System Usability Scale (SUS) research method is an important tool when a participant is evaluating the usability of a system. Our SUS consists of a 10-item questionnaire used to measure a product or service on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being a strong disagreement and 5 being a strong agreement. Our usability testing consists of a series of questions designed to evaluate several characteristics of a website, such as its simplicity of use, efficiency, and overall satisfaction. I was impressed with how simple and quick the test was to complete, and it gave us useful insights into our usability testing of the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar. Overall, I will say that the SUS test is a great research method for anybody trying to evaluate a system's usability.
Question 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8 we're not favorable in our 10-item questionnaire.
Question 1, 3, 5, 9, and 10 we're favorable in our 10-item questionnaire.
USER #1 - Overall score was a 72.5
USER #2 - Overall scores was a 97.5
USER #3 - Overall scores was a 90
Most of the participants rated the website as Excellent, Acceptable, and Promoter.
When we were done with our Usability Testing on the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar, using our three research methods we gathered all our findings from our participants and evaluated them to see the difference between our participants. Our data findings were created by our Think Aloud Protocol (TAP), Open-Card Sorting, and System Usability Scale (SUS) research methods.
After, we were done conducting our usability testing on the Hobby Lobby Navigation Bar. We came up with some recommendations for the company to keep in mind to make their website user-friendly. Based on the findings of our usability testing, we updated some areas on the navigation bar to solve the problems that we discovered. We adjusted the navigation bar on the Hobby Lobby website and the style of the navigation tab to make sure that it's more user-friendly for the users. Overall, we believe that our usability testing was a valuable study that help us to improve the Hobby Lobby navigation bar website and provide the best possible experience for the users.
1. Rather than having Fabric and Sewing categories grouped together, the Sewing category should be separated out.
2. The category "HomeDecor & Frame" should be changed to "Decor".
3. A minimum of seven categories and a maximum of eleven categories should be provided.
4.The website’s navigation should be designed so that the new user can quickly identify a department's name based on the product they are interested in purchasing.
In conclusion, this project taught me what Usability Testing is and how to conduct it. We didn't have much time to go into this project because it was just two weeks long. However, I believe that one of the challenges that we faced was in ensuring that our online testing environment was as realistic as possible. Since we wanted our participants to be able to utilize the website in the same manner they would in the real world. Another problem was finding a varied set of participants since we want to hear different perspectives or input from people of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels to ensure that the website is accessible to everyone.
Overall, I believe that our usability testing ensured that the website is user-friendly and easily accessible to a wide variety of people.
