Minnesota compass

A nonpartisan social indicators project that measure progress in the state of MN and its communities, in terms of education, economy, health, and housing.

Challenge

Aid Minnesota Compass in understanding how users interact with the current site, focusing on navigability, findability, and attractiveness, in order to improve usability for the site's redesign.

Solution

A findings and recommendations report distilling observations from usability testing into high-level takeaways and annotated prototypes.

KEY DELIVERABLES

Findings & Recommendations

Methods

Heuristic analysis

Usability testing

Affinity diagramming

Prototyping

tools

Whereby

Quicktime

Keynote

I was engaged by Minnesota Compass, a nonpartisan social indicators project that measures progress in the state of MN and its communities, in terms of education, economy, health, and housing. They are aware of how valuable such information is, and work to ensure that the people who want to access it can, and that those who are new to the site aren't scared away by the window dressing.

Ideally, the people who use MN Compass are those with the ears of others, community leaders in the form of business owners and policymakers alike. Those who tirelessly work to ensure that all within Minnesota's borders are protected to the best of their ability. But we all have a voice, and every resident with an interest in credible, nonpartisan data deserves to be able to see that data.

So, in order to aid the spreading of knowledge for the sake of all Minnesotans, I set out with my team to make that knowledge more accessible. We first started by familiarizing ourselves with the current site. Simple in coloration, with icons placed neatly yet without glutting the eye overly much, Minnesota Compass appeared earnest - old in style comparatively to nowadays designs, yes, but faithfully plugging along and solid in its duty. A dependable car - not necessarily pretty to look at, and there might be a few workarounds that the driver needs to learn through sheer practice, but it's going to chug along just fine and deliver you safely anywhere.

What my team and I can do, however, is give that car a fresh coat of paint. Maybe an oil job, smooth out that engine. What makes the car great will still be there, but new drivers won't be as quick to dismiss it due to its appearance, and more familiar drivers will be able to drive along more smoothly.

So, with an eye on what was currently there, my team went over what our client wanted, and did our best to reconcile those two views.

Key "aha" moments

Formulating goals based on tasks given to us in the client brief

Generally talking with teammates

Organizing data with "how people ___ your data", helps me mentally sort - organization clicks

Afternoon coffee gives a good boost - morning coffee is lovely, but uncovering an extra jolt of energy is delightful. And sorely needed.

An interesting discovery

It amazes me how some participants believe that they've successfully completed a task, whereas they've fundamentally misused a part of the website's function. For instance, two of my participants compared a selection of two MN counties to that self-same selection, all the while believing that they'd compared the counties to each other. The resultant data was exactly the same, and was being compared side by side. There was a label near the top also denoting what exactly was being compared. This was a lack of observation, which I'm not quite sure yet how to prevent. All the hierarchy in the world can't prevent someone from simply not reading the material. All the same, I simply can't say how much was a lack of observation compared to a poor design. That also worries me, because how much do I miss unknowingly? I just find the human mentality interesting.

If users are familiar with a tool, they will use that tool if at all possible

The order of questions/tasks greatly matters due to that familiarity

Wording/language matters

Most people don't read smaller print when bombarded with info