AAT Knowledge Hub
The challenge.
Prior to my involvement Knowledge Hub has already been built and launched for 12 months. This was done following research that suggested AAT members couldn’t find the content (CPD resources) they were looking for on our existing website.
The challenge was to understand user behaviour and the usability, accessibility and desirability of Knowledge Hub, AAT’s resource and member content platform, in order to inform design improvements
My role.
As I was not involved in the original scope, design or build of the product my initial reaction to testing is to look into the users behaviours, seeking to understand their day to day tasks, pain points and ultimately if we are meeting an unmet need with this product. Secondary to this I wanted to understand why, when and how this product would be desirable and/or useful to them. Once this had been established I then wanted to gain an understanding of the accessibility and usability of the platform itself.
The session was run by an independent agency whilst we listened and recorded our notes. 10 users tested on both desktop and mobile devices. There was a mix of user defined testing and predefined scenarios.
Discovery.
Analysing the findings.
Using the notes collated from all observers they were collated and grouped refine the pain points and feedback and then and then mapped to identify the most frequent and highest impact insights.
These findings were then put together in a short report, along with the objectives, methodology and test scripts to provide the product team with something from which to discuss potential solutions.
The team then proposed solutions based on the priorities outlined in the report and in relation to business factors including resources, business priorities and impact.
The outcome.
The outcome lead to both usability, content and proposition changes to make the Knowledge Hub more relevant for user groups. This led to a 30% increase in site traffic and an increase in usage amongst new members. A clearer value proposition also provided a greater return on sponsorship income.
Lessons learnt.
Research.
Given the time constraints on the project and my initial relative inexperience in design research I only undertook a few user interviews. If I were to do this again I would certainly look to get a wider range of views, expanding my understanding an empathy and creating a clearer understanding of the problem I am trying to solve. Since starting this project my experience in user research has increased significantly with mentoring from user researchers and practical application in further design and product research.
Ideation.
I learnt a considerable amount throughout this project, specifically about design principles and using various design software (Sketch, Principle, InVision and InVision Studio). If I were to do this again I would have created a mood board and had a clearer understanding of the design language before starting any sketching. This would focus my designs early on and avoid the later changes I needed make to improve the UI and usability. I would also then spend more time paper sketching producing and dismissing ideas and then moving into more mid-fidelity wireframes for further ideation and testing.