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NWPB coverage area.

INTRODUCTION

Northwest Public Broadcasting stations are licensed to Washington State University. NWPB reaches more than
3.6 million people in 44 counties throughout Washington state and parts of Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia. Approximately half of the population reached receives public radio broadcast signals exclusively through NWPB.

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Project Duration: June 2020 – (ongoing)

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Team: Freddie Medina and Aurelia Kare

 

Role: UX Researcher/Information Architect/Designer

Methods: User and Stakeholder Interviews; Radio/TV Survey via Google Forms; Competitive Analysis; Heuristic Analysis of current website using Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles; User Affinity Mapping; Stakeholder Affinity Mapping: Open Card Sort; Problem Statement Writing; Persona Generation; User Journey Map; User Flow Revision; Site Map Revision; Wireframing

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Tools: Figma, Invision, Invision Freehand, Mural, Google Suite, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop, Optimal Workshop
Card Sort 

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This project is ongoing and the case study will be updated as new milestones are reached.

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The team had an informal conversation with the stakeholders.Some concerns were brought up. They want to find ways of refreshing the site to get their mission objectives more realized.

RESEARCH

INTERVIEW WITH STAKEHOLDERS

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Summary of insights, feelings, pain points and goals:

  • Stakeholders feel users are positive about website

  • The majority of our users come to the website to listen to one of the radio stations

  • Most web visitors go directly to the home page.

  • Content is unfocused. Content should focus FIRST on Northwest

  • The site needs more interesting images and graphics (finds graphics unsophisticated)

  • Fix those dead links! (eg “to donate”)

  • Infomation Architecture should be more organized

  • Current audience needs large type sizes

  • They would like to see a distinct grouping of Radio, TV, News and multimedia

  • Most important message: to be the source of INFORMATION for all things Northwest

  • See more culture and arts in eastern Washington

  • Unsure if users can find their way around website

  • Want to see more donate buttons

  • Doesn’t believe people become members because of website

  • Provide distinctive programming with an education angle

 

 

DATA SYNTHESIS

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Shareholder Interviews Affinity Map (using Invision Freehand for online collaboration)

User Interviews

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In order to better understand User experiences we conducted 6 interviews over the phone. The summary of Users insights, feelings, pain points and goals are as follows:

  • 50% of users use the phone app

  • All users listen to NWPB radio stations

  • 66% of users do not watch TV

  • ⅓ of users spend less than 5 mins visiting desktop website

  • 83% of users visit the site infrequently

  • 100% of users also get their local news from local newspapers, Google and national news sites such as the Washington Post and New York Times.

  • Users says site does not contain much local news.

  • Users says it takes a while for news to appear on the site

  • 50% of users do not like the scrolling banner

  • Streaming access is important and should be immediate moved up in hierarchy

  • Phone browser have more problems: Users wants to see link to radio immediately

  • A user says it takes a while for news to appear on website

  • A user says that streaming is always down on the phone browser

  • 83% of users visit the site to read more about a missed story

  • Stream button too small on desktop site

  • Users wants more stories and in depth writing

 

 

DATA SYNTHESIS

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User Interviews Affinity Map (using Invision Freehand for online collaboration)

COMPetitive ANALYSIS

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In order to understand how NWPB.org compares in the existing Public Station Website space, eight stations were chosen. Seven of them feature both Radio and TV stations. One only features its own Radio Station. 

 

Seven websites prominently display radio streaming. Only one shows immediate access to TV streaming. The rest shows access to TV in their secondary navigation.

 

All of the websites feature local news first. 

 

None of them offers a coverage map. This is where NWPB has an advantage. 

 

Only one website features a moving carousel of information below two levels of navigation. 

 

Four websites have very organized support and donation pages. They have their own navigation buttons making the user know exactly where he or she is. One website even has a dedicated phone number for requests for more information. NWPB could benefit from from how their donation and support pages are presented.

Personas

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Using insights from our Affinity Map, Aurelia and I created 2 Personas.

Heuristic ANALYSIS

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A Heuristic Analysis of the NWPB.org website was made based on Jakob Nielsen's ten general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb and not specific usability guidelines. The following are a summary of findings:

  • Hover state is inconsistent, or non-existent. A hover color turns black into green which has the same
    color value – an accessibility problem for the color impaired

  • Page scrolling collapses top navigation (no indication where user is)

  • Eyebrow navigation switches to right on scroll

  • Drop down menus from top nav do not highlight selection before tap

  • Top Nav underline is missing on some pages

  • Color highlight indicator in top navigation (green) is indiscernible. No highlight of selection on modals

  • Label above bar is sometimes centered, sometimes on left

  • Can users stream from the same page instead of linking to another URL?

  • There are no warnings about leaving the NWPB.org site

  • Stories with small images and column width copy is awkward

  • Dead CTA's (call to action)

  • Sidebar widths inconsistent

  • No link to share stories to social media – no interactivity for user (free press for NWPB)

  • Accelerators in the forms of copying, emailing and sharing articles are none

USABILITY TESTING

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In order to understand how real users interact with the current website we constructed 3 tasks for 5 users. There were 3 in-person and 2 remote tests. The three tasks were finding a specific news article, finding the classical streaming button and donating a car. 

 

Results were:

  • Finding a specific news article: 3 users found it under 5 seconds, while 2 users averaged 49 seconds

  • Finding the Classical Radio Button: 2 users found it below 6 seconds; 3 users averaged 40 seconds

  • Donating a car: 2 users found it below 7 seconds, 3 users averaged 53 seconds

 

Obviously there were problems why 2 to 3 users are not finding the specific items asked of them within 10 seconds. 

 

According to Jakob  Nielsen of the Nielsen-Norman Group, “first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for users' decision to stay or leave. The probability of leaving is very high during these first few seconds because users are extremely skeptical, having suffered countless poorly designed web pages in the past. People know that most web pages are useless, and they behave accordingly to avoid wasting more time than absolutely necessary on bad pages.”

USER JOURNEY MAP

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Based on the insights of user and stakeholder interviews and usability test findings, we constructed a User Journey Map in Sustaining Membership. This is based on the existing website.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

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Based on the results of the tools above, the problem statement has been established:

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NWPB.org users need a better way to navigate their local TV/Radio website because this will ease frustrations and maximize their time thereby providing a more rewarding experience.

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Hypothesis:

 

We believe that by optimizing the NWPB.org website we will create a more engaging experience for NWPB users. We will know when we see increased site traffic, content sharing, and new memberships/donations.


 

How May We:

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Make it easier for users to find local news stories.

Make it easier for users to find streaming content.

Make it easier for users to share local news stories.

Make it easier for users to find ways to support NWPB.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

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We did two sets of card sorting exercises. The first round is based on all the navigation categories existing on the website. The first exercise was done with physical cards with 3 users. There were 53 cards identified. The number of categories overwhelmed the users. This exercise proved that the categories in the present website needs to be streamlined.

 

The second round involves Optimal Card Workshop, an online card sorting tool. This site can only accommodate 30 cards. 

 

This exercise was not a success either. We think that we could have explained this exercise better. Five participants didn’t understand how to use the online tool because they did not create new categories to classify other items. Two users out of seven abandoned it. They tried to fit everything into categories given to them. 

 

Indirectly we come into conclusion that the present IA of the site is not effective based on the amount of main navigation items. Also our usability findings pointed to that conclusion as well.

 

The team has decided to review the comparative analysis, usability findings and heuristic analysis of the current site. We looked for commonalities among the 8 stations. 

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We examined what work well with each website. How certain aspects such as radio streaming is presented. Also on how support and donation pages are presented as well.

 

The main aim is to streamline the site with as few navigation items as possible, among other things

 

We will start doing wireframes based on the above. We will conduct a usability test of these to further strengthen the IA.

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NEXT STEPS

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Our next steps will include low-fi wireframes, usability testing, iterations, and increased fidelity prototypes of the User Interface.

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