Learning Commons:Student Orientation/UX Lab Design

From UBC Wiki

Usability testing, via UX labs, is an effective approach to gain additional insight into student behaviours when interacting with a product, resource, etc. We use it to observe how students interact with and use the Learning Commons website. It can be useful to provide information after a small navigational change to the site or as part of an iterative design process - to better understand the behavior of our users so that we can design to suit.

Workflow

We have based this generalized workflow for the conception and execution of a UX lab on our Fall 2016 implementation:

  • Identify constraints: Before you can start your UX lab, it's important to identify any key deadlines that might have an impact on how many students you're able to attract, and how much time/resources you're able to spend per response.
  • Define your purpose: Ensure that you are clear about exactly what you are trying to learn from observing students. Remember that usability is about observation. You may also want to combine this with an interview but keep your data (per user together so that you can detect any mismatches between what is said and what is done (when conducting tasks).
  • Find your main research question(s): These are the questions you want to be able to reasonably answer at the end of the UX session. The students' role is to carry out the tasks you define or participate in an interview. They provide the data (or evidence) that you can share in response to your questions.
  • Design your session: Design tasks or activities that will allow you to observe how students naturally interact with the website. Relate directly back to your research questions, while making sure that your session falls within the appropriate time constraints you've identified in step 1. Try your best to anticipate resource requirements (eg. room bookings, equipment lending, advertising requirements) here as well.
  • Test your session: Remember to pitch your session to the team for any feedback, and run test sessions by yourself to accurately gauge how much time it will take. Revise or remove any unnecessary questions.
  • Execute session: Self-explanatory. Remember to record everything - all actions students take in response to the tasks. It helps to have 2 people for every session - one for the explanation of the tasks and one to observe and record.
  • Communicate results: Putting recordings and initial impressions of the sessions on ActiveCollab ensures that everyone on the web team will be on the same page when you discuss your findings.
  • Relate back to project: Use your data to make informed progress on your project, and repeat if necessary.

Samples and templates

Research plan template

A one-page research plan is helpful for aggregating the most important details needed to run your session into a quick, skimmable format. 

Learning Commons site UX research: _________
by _________

GOALS
Reiterate purpose

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
3 main research questions (basically - what do I want to learn from the students?)

METHODOLOGY
Describe the process, time commitments, and all requirements.

SETUP
How much time will you need before and after each session?

PARTICIPANTS
What kinds of people are you running the UX labs with?

SCHEDULE
Advertising: _________
Study date: _________
Analysis completion: _________
Results + design suggestions: _________

DEMO LINKS
Sample preview link: ________

Sample research questions

Navigation

  • How do students navigate our site?
  • How do students find specific information (when given a task or goal)?
  • where do students get stuck or pause to ask questions (frustration points)?

Content

  • What do students expect to find on the site?
  • What did they find?
  • How did they rate it (useful? not useful?)
  • What's missing?

Sample session elements

Session activities are broken up into 3 main categories.

Functionality

  • (2-3 minutes): Ask the student to find a page based on what they might want to know (e.g. Where would you go to find resources on how to write an essay?) and see how they navigate to that page from the home page. No intervention allowed, but ask the participant to vocalize their thought process as they go.
  • (1 minute): Ask the student to skim articles from different sections of the website (one from Resource Kits and Tutoring & Studying) and ask them to compare the two layouts
  • (3-4 minutes): Ask the student to find a blog post that covers material not touched by any of the resource guides (e.g. the best places to nap on campus, one of our top blog posts of last year)
  • (passive): Throughout the navigation tests, if anything looks weird to the student (facial signs of discomfort or frustration), ask and clarify

Content

  • (5-7 minutes): Ask the student to skim two different articles from different sections of the website (e.g. Tutoring & Studying and Resource Kits). Ask them what they thought the main points of each page were, and whether they think that information was emphasized on the page through headers, tone, white space, etc.
  • (2-3 minutes): Ask the student some questions about their thoughts on academics/stress/wellness/learning in general. Using the responses from those questions, ask the student if the website caters to those needs.
  • (7-10 minutes): Using cards with all of our current resource names and purposes, ask students to group them based on their titles alone. Record the groupings. Next, using some additional cards with our current Information headers on them, ask students to sort the cards under the header cards. Record the groupings. Throughout the exercise, ask the student to vocalize their opinions and any frustrations they might have.

Gauge interests

  • (2-3 minutes): Think ahead 1-2 months from now. What do you think you’ll be focused on, and what might you be worried about the most. Based on the responses from the question, ask the student to find the resources most related to their worries. Make a note if they don’t exist yet.
  • (7-10 minutes): Longer variation of the activity above. Ask open-ended questions about stress, wellbeing, academics, and learning to make a list of the student’s current concerns about those broader topics. Go down the list and ask the student to try and find resources on the website corresponding to each of those concerns. If the concern is not at all addressed, where else would the student go? If the concern is inadequately addressed or hard to find on the site, why is that?
  • (2-3 minutes): Using 2-3 mockups of a home page with a targeted hero image (the large, full-width image with “Welcome to the Learning Commons” on it) and header, ask the student to compare the headers and discuss which one is the most effective, and why.

Further reading

  • [1](Nielsen Norman Group): In-depth discussion of specific areas in UX research, though a bit too detailed for initial ideas
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