Canadian Museum of Nature

ABOUT OUR PROJECT

The Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) is Canada’s national natural history museum located in Ontario, Ottawa. With just under 500,000 visitors a year, their website serves as a starting point for visitors to learn about their research programs, extensive collections, and exhibitions before their visit to the museum.

Their website initially launched in 2009 with minor updates throughout the years. Our team of four UX consultants from the Center for Digital Experiences at Pratt Institute partnered with CMN to conduct nine Moderated Remote User Tests. This method allows us to uncover the usability problems found on their current website in order to provide feasible recommendations for their redesign project in September 2020.

CLIENT

Canadian Museum of Nature

TIMELINE

6 weeks (Mar 2020 - May 2020)

DESIGN TOOLS

Adobe (Photoshop, InDesign, Xd)

MY ROLE

Our team worked collaboratively to submit a written report with website mockup recommendations as our final product.

My roles included:

• Writing the user test moderator script

• Conducting and moderating two virtual user tests

• Analyzing and consolidating usability problems

• Creating mock-up recommendations and writing report

• Creating and presenting final presentation deck

TEAM MEMBERS

Liza Burroughs

Alejandra Estigarribia

Angela Wang

SETTING GOALS

In the kickoff meeting, CMN revealed the primary challenge of their website is that it has an “old look and feel” that does not mach the current time, nor is information presented in a way that provides optimal viewing experience for their most frequented pages.

With the client’s challenge in mind, our team framed our goal as: to provide visitors with a seamless user experience for the “Home Page” and “Plan Your Visit” sections of the website, and include an updated content and aesthetics design for our recommendations.

RECRUITING PARTICIPANTS

Characterize Our Users
Two user profiles were chosen pertaining to CMN’s request:

1. Parents

2. Tourists

And our selection criteria were defined as:

• Has traveled for leisure within the past year

• Has visited a local or foreign museum

• Has used a museum's website

• Is comfortable with using the internet

Finding Participants and Writing the Screening Questionnaire
A screening questionnaire was then sent out via four different avenues to help reach our target user groups:

• Canadian Museum of Nature’s listerv

• Pratt School of Information’s listserv

• Center for Social Innovation’s listserv

• Personal networks

Profile

Age

Gender

PREPARE MATERIALS

We continued to prepare materials for our user tests.

These consisted of:

• Consent form
  to get consent for audio, video, and screen recordings

• Moderator script
  to keep our results standardized

• Pre-test questionnaire
  to get to know our participants better

• Post-test questionnaire

  to get to know how our participants feel

DEVELOP TASKS

Three tasks were developed, all targeting the frequently visited pages of CMN’s website:

CONDUCT USER TESTS

Our team utilized the Moderated Remote User Testing method, which involves users and facilitators in the same “virtual” space while the facilitator moderates the entire testing session.

Participants were asked to “think-aloud” their thought process as they perform each task. The advantage of this method is that it allows our team to get a better understanding of how our participants think and behave.

Here is a summary of our user tests:

• We used Google Meet to conduct nine user tests, 40 min sessions each

• Participants were asked to complete three tasks

• Audio, video and screen sharing recordings were captured

• Qualitative insights were collected from the think-aloud method, follow up task questions, and post-test questionnaire/questions

DEBRIEF

After each session, we analyzed our data individually then came together as a team to talk about the general insights learned from all of our sessions.

of our users thought planning a visit
to the CMN was an overall pleasant experience

of our users found it relatively easy to navigate the site

of our users found the tasks assigned were clearly discoverable

of our users found the
interface aesthetically pleasing

There are currently too many secondary navigation options and labels on the Home Page. The numerous entry points may confuse users and prevent them from discovering their intended destination.

Participants struggled to find key information site-wide but it was particularly evident on the Admission page. This was due to excess text, unclear hierarchy, and excessive scrolling, altogether making participants impatient.

While the majority of our participants were able to accomplish the tasks, they also remarked that it would have been much easier to complete if key information was clearly visible. The problems they encountered were due to redundant texts and inefficient use of photo arrangement and layout.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

Meeting & Future Considerations
On May 6, 2020, we presented our findings to two members of CMN’s web and content development team. They were impressed with our work, and thought our recommendations were all great suggestions to consider.

Our client found our findings on redundant information and confusing entry points in their information architecture particularly helpful. It has been an ongoing challenge for the Museum, and they realized presenting all different pathways for perspective audiences on the Home Page may further confuse other set of audiences. This will be a key challenge for them to tackle and they are happy to share our recorded presentation and full report with their team during their website redesign.

For future analysis, we recommended CMN to conduct card sorting and tree testing to uncover which audiences (parents, educators, tourists, tourist groups, researchers) and key actions (buying tickets, donate, become a member) they should prioritize. A prototype should be developed according to the results from their tests, while also taking our recommendations into consideration. CMN can then conduct another round of user tests to see if the same usability problems arise.

REFLECTION

Our team managed to recruit virtual participants, coordinate and attend all scheduled meetings while in different time zones, deliver a full written report, and present a successful deck to our clients all in midst of a pandemic. I feel very proud of my team for everything we’ve accomplished and the individual contributions put in to make it work.

Conducting moderated remote user tests has taught me it is essential to have a back up plan when things don’t work out, such as dealing with technical issues or participants cancelling. Despite the circumstances, this experience also showed how technology has made it so easy to work with clients and team members from around the world, and conduct user tests online via Zoom and Google Meet. In the future, I look forward to conducting face-to-face user tests to see how the method varies from e-meeting to meeting in person.