Following are a few case studies from successful usability testing projects:
A Quasi-Governmental Agency
A Financial Government Bureau
A Major Midwestern Medical Center
A Prestigious Mid-Atlantic Medical Center
A Historic Southern Nightclub
A Quasi-Governmental Agency
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A quasi-governmental organization that helps people suffering from PTSD had a confusing website with unclear navigation and overwhelming content on the home page. Our team ran eye-tracked usability tests on the site with representatives from the organization’s different target audiences.
Based on our testing, we recommended the organization make changes to their content presentation, as well as consolidate some of their navigation items and rename them for clarity. We also recommended different use of images and colors to change the perception of the organization.
We conducted a second round of testing to measure the effectiveness of our recommendations. Because of the nature of the organization’s CMS (over which they have no control), they weren’t able to make significant changes to the layout, but they were able to change the colors, images, and overall feel of the content areas, and were able to consolidate and rename some of their navigation items.
The second round of testing showed significant improvement in the areas the organization modified. Additionally, we were able to test a little deeper and uncover some more changes they could easily make to continue improving the usability of their site.
A Financial Government Bureau
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A bureau of the federal government that manages government debt is responsible for selling financial appliances to raise funds to run the government. These appliances come in the form of savings bonds, Treasury Bills, Treasury Bonds, etc. In 2010, the sale of paper bonds was phased out so it was important to ensure the website was easy to use.
Usability testing results indicated that new users to the site were overwhelmed with the number of links available to them, and were not clear where most of those links would lead. For the casual investor, this caused a high percentage of site abandonment. For institutional and government investors, the stakes were higher, so they were more inclined to continue studying the site, but they tended to bookmark pages to avoid the landing page in the future.
Our team recommended a complete redesign of the home page to make it immediately clear where the different types of investors should go on the site. Using bold colors and images, large text, and easy to understand icons, we were able to make the channeling of the audiences a much easier process. Additionally, we performed a complete content overhaul of the Individual Investors content area, combining and rewriting content, reorganizing pages, completely rewriting the Glossary, How Do I, and Help sections.
Additional testing has since been performed on the Institutional Investor and Government Investor sections.
A Major Midwestern Medical Center
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Our team conducted a simple, online usability test to verify the proposed navigational scheme of the website. We found that while it was mostly sound, there were some minor issues with the nomenclature that could have an effect on the ability of users to get where they want. We worked to come up with a nomenclature that will convey the navigation clearly, while not adversely affecting branding and SEO.
A Prestigious Mid-Atlantic Medical Center
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Our team conducted several usability tests on a new mobile site being developed by this prestigious medical center. This new site would be geared toward international patients and physicians and needed to highlight not only the typical information imparted by a hospital website, but information that would be useful to travelers – such as nearby hotels, restaurants, parking, etc.
The first test was a reverse card sort to verify the effectiveness of the navigation. The results showed the navigation was sound and only very minor modifications were recommended.
The second test was a usability test which uncovered minor usability issues, but more importantly uncovered some technical problems with the way the navigation functioned on certain devices. These issues were corrected and the site was launched on time.
A Historic Southern Nightclub
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This was a simple, heuristic review and consultation to take a site with a large amount of superfluous information and pare it down to the essential content customers are looking for – contact information, location, entertainment schedule, and drink specials. The resulting site is responsive, has effective SEO, fast load times and a good conversion rate.