It needn't be a rubbish experience…
Usually I live by the UX mantra "I am not the user", but in this case I am!
It was my frustration with the existing system that made me look into how it could be improved. Who knows, maybe someone from Newport Council is watching?!
My aim was to:
I wanted an overview of the full list of recycling services that needed to be considered.
I wanted to discover any inefficiencies/replication in the current process, so I developed the following UX flow diagram.
Download the UX Flow DiagramAs well as issues with user flow, I also wanted to highlight any specific usability concerns and obstacles that may have made my experience frustrating enough to build an alternative prototype!
Ideally an analysis should be undertaken by a team of 3 to 5 designers and their findings cross-referenced, but the reality is that this is a personal project with no budget so 1 will have to do!
I felt that the narrow scope of the evaluation (purely concerned with the request form usability) meant that I should be able to identify enough of the main pain points on my own to improve the user experience.
In an attempt to avoid personal bias I used Jakob Nielsen et. al's 10 usability principles as a framework for the analysis.
The main roadblocks and areas of friction my evaluation found were as follows (this is not a comprehensive report of the evaluation findings):
The design should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time.
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform and industry conventions.
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no error codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
For me, this is the most obvious pain point in the process.
One of my main objectives was to increase the efficiency of the ordering process, which should mean that the tasks take less time to perform, so I set users a specific scenario and measured the time taken to complete the task.
The average completion times are shown below:
Average time to complete existing form:
Average time to complete prototype form:
Success! I've nearly halved the time it takes residents to complete the task
As well as timing the resident's performance, I also made a note of any comments made during testing and received some positive feedback about the new design, such as:
The tasks are a lot clearer than a load of do's and
don'ts…
I like the traffic light system, makes it clear for me to see
what I've ordered…
I'm glad I haven't got to scroll all the way back up the page
in this version to submit my order…