Usability Study
- This was a moderated study using 5 participants on virtual meetings of about 45 minutes long.
- There were 5 tasks participants had to perform, the 3 most important were:
- Find a specific legal document about the prices of Wood.
- Find a Submission by it’s ID number.
- Find a specific Factual Record
Usability Study: Findings
- People were using the pages as navigation.
- People had a really difficult time looking for a specific legal document
- People felt frustrated when there was no hints or way to find documents easier.
Personas
User Stories
- As a teacher, I want to find clear information so that I can explain it to my class or my son.
- As an environmental activist, I want to find the latest laws so that I can promote community participation.
Insights
- Priority 0
- Based on the theme that: Most people felt the structure needs to be improved, an insight is: Information Architecture needs to be restructured to make it easier to find information
- Priority 1
- Based on the theme that: Most people looked for navigation using the frontpage, an insight is: Frontpage need to show snippets of the main sections
- Priority 2
- Based on the theme that: Most people needed visual cues or keywords to know what topics are covered by a document, an insight is: All documents repositories need to show excerpts and tags to help them cluster similar documents and find information faster.
Ideation
Paper Wireframes
Desktop Version
Mobile Version
Digital Wireframes
- Navigation was reflected on the frontpage to help people find it easier.
- Frontpage resulted in doom scrolling because it was too long, reduced the size and simplified information.
Lo-Fi Prototype
- The Flow was redesigned to let people do 3 things with ease:
- Browse environmental legislation
- File a Submission
- Find Citizen Participation and Outreach materials they can print.
- Open in Figma: https://www.figma.com/file/pk0VCRbkhPfCWfltmSoUMX/Home?type=design&node-id=1%3A2&t=vJ8eI4FkopwDi6CB-1
Mockups
- Based on the insights, information was presented more clear on shorter paragraphs.
- Large color buttons are now part of the layout so people now know they can click on them to move to other pages.
- Graphic load was reduced to help loading times on remote áreas where Internet Access is limited.
Responsive Designs
Finally, these are the responsive designs for the website along with a change of the Information Architecture to help users find content easier.