Indianapolis Animal Care Services Website | Usability Testing | Prototype Recommendations

Team: 5 members (including myself as the team lead)

I describe my role and the work I did for this project

About the Organization

Indianapolis Animal Care Services (IACS) is a community-based organization that works to promote the safety/health and wellbeing of pets and their owners in Marion County. IACS educates the public on issues like public safety and humane issues with regard to animal care. On an average 14,000 animals are housed and protected at IACS yearly.

IACS’s website (part of the City of Indianapolis’s government brand) is used by people who wish to adopt a pet, donate a pet, someone who would like to notify IACS about stray animals and find lost pets. The product serves as a guidebook/reference book to its staff members. IACS’s site is expected to support volunteers to carry out their daily official activities as well. It also serves as a tool for new volunteers to sign up and work for the organization.

Challenge

The IACS website was not user friendly. The challenge given to me was to improve the overall usability of the IACS’s website and elevate its user experience.

My Role

I was a part of conducting Contextual Inquiries, Cognitive Walkthroughs, Heuristic evaluations, Think aloud tests and proposing a solution for A/B testing.

I lead the team in redesigning some of the major elements of the website that we proposed during the A/B testing phase.

Research Questions

RQ1

Is the target audience able to find the Events page or are they frustrated upon not being able to search for any events using the IACS’s website?

RQ2

Do the users find multiple links for adopting a pet confusing? How easy is it for them to perform this task?

RQ3

How convenient is it for users to make a particular type of donation to the organization through this site?

The Evaluation Process

Interview | Cognitive Walkthrough | Think Aloud Test | Heuristic Evaluation | A/B Test

Interviews

I conducted interview sessions with the client and the volunteers working at IACS who use the site on a regular basis. I also took to social media to inquire about the experiences of other people who have used the site to adopt a pet in the past. Following a script, I organized the data collected from the interviews to enlist issues that frustrate the users.

Complex navigation
Functionality Issue
Unorganized links
Poor Visuals – Not visually appealing
Disorganized layout for images – Poor user interface for pictures

Cognitive Walkthroughs

I then performed Cognitive walkthroughs to self-evaluate the website. I defined tasks to understand the pressing usability issues. This method enabled me to come up with appropriate suggestions and solutions.

Task 1: Adopt a Dog

One of the primary tasks is adopting a pet. Users can search for a specific pet through the website’s gallery and visit the campus or call them to book an appointment.

Task 2: Find an Event

IACS hosts several events to promote animal safety and pet adoption.

Task 3: Make a Donation

IACS provides another feature for donating funds. Organizations or users can donate toys for pets or funds using one of the four options available on the website.

Think Aloud Tests

The next step was to recruit potential users of the IACS website to conduct the Think Aloud Tests.

Users performed the tasks of adopting a dog, finding an event, and making a donation while thinking out loud and letting me know their pain points and frustrations when using the website.

I was the mediator of the session. I was involved in defining and explaining the tasks, while simultaneously recording the screen interactions made by the users with their prior consent.