SPEAKHIRE Website Usability Study

The purpose of this study was to identify areas for improvement for a redesign of the original SPEAKHIRE website. The goal was to increase donations and utilization of the website. The new design also needed to better support English Language Learners (ELL).

Techniques used in this study were usability testing, heuristic evaluation, card sorts, and flowcharts.

Key findings of the qualitative usability study included unclear navigation, poor font consistency, a lack of aesthetic, and excessive description text. Each key finding was utilized in the website redesign. The Home page was redesigned with CTAs for the most common actions on the website. Navigation was overhauled. Page descriptions were simplified for ELL students. The redesigned website is available at www.speakhire.com.

A limitation of this study was the inability to interview students due to privacy issues. However, Nielsen and Norman indicate that you only need to test with 5 users to find 85% of all usability problems on a website. The study involved questions from a student's perspective in order to capture student use cases.

Tasks:

1. Find a way to subscribe to SPEAKHIRE emails.

2. Locate the Speaker Series. Find a speaker that interests you and open their recorded speech.

3. You are now a student who has completed the SPEAKHIRE curriculum. You would like to join a program called the Exploratory Years. Add a program that costs less than $100 to your cart. Do NOT make a purchase.

4. Find and view Issue #6 of the SPEAKHIRE magazine.

5. SPEAKHIRE runs a yearly event called the SPEAKHIRE Summit. Find this event. Open the registration page and submit your information. Use the following information to check out: test@test.com, Jane Doe, and Test School.

The updated navigation simplified several user flows. The following is an example of a common student task which was simplified and made accessible from two different pages on the website.