Pratt Institute
Usability Study - Eye Tracking
Overview
Helping Pratt Institute understand how prospective graduate students navigate and consume information on their redesigned mobile website
This eye-tracking study aims to understand how prospective graduate students on Pratt's recently redesigned website find out about the programs, their course structure, and requirements and navigate through its application process on the pratt.edu mobile website. A team of four user experience researchers analyzed the data gathered from conducting interviews using Tobi. Based on that the researchers gathered three major insights and addressed these with recommendations for them.
My Role: Research Ops team, Eye-tracking interviews, Propose Recommendations, Creating mockups, Final Presentation
Team Members: 1 UX Designers and 2 UX Researcher
Duration: 8 weeks
Pratt Institute founded in 1887, is a private institute located in New York. The institute offers various undergraduate and graduate programs. They recently redesigned their website in August 2022 and wish to understands how prospective students would navigate on their mobile website to gather information about programs offered at Pratt.
Research Objectives
Analyzing Pratt Institute's redesigned websites efficiency
01.
To understand how prospective grad students find the information they need to apply to a graduate program on the pratt.edu mobile website.
02.
To understand whether information on the pratt.edu mobile website is useful to prospective grad students when applying to a graduate program.
Target Audience
Who is Pratt focusing on by conducting this eye-tracking study?
Pratt wishes to understand how prospective students navigate through the redesigned website to find information about programs and their requirements. They want to analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of both desktop and mobile sites. One of their primary target audience includes:
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Prospective Undergraduate Students
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Prospective Graduate Student (focus for this case study)
Participant Demographics
We tested the pratt.edu mobile website with 7 potential graduate students.
Background
Gender Ratio
Age Group
Research Questions
What questions will help understand the effectiveness of the redesigned website?
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What is the flow prospective grad students take on the pratt.edu mobile website when researching Pratt Institute’s programs?
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How do users find information about the application requirements?
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How do prospective students learn about the credibility of Pratt Institute?
Research Methodology
Methods and Metrics used
To analyze how users navigate through Pratt's mobile website to find information and how they comprehend it, an eye-tracking method was adopted for this study to get accurate results. This study included:
Tasks
Tasks that help us identify the pain points
01. Browse through the programs Pratt offers and find a program you are interested in. Find the duration of the course and the required courses for the program.
02. You’re now interested in applying to the program. Find the required application materials and the application deadline.
03. Apply to the program of your choice from the previous tasks. Stop once you get to the application portal.
04. You have heard about Pratt Institute and want to learn more about whether it is a reputable institution or not. Navigate to the information you would look at to assess Pratt Institute at a first glance.
Overview of Findings
What has worked well for the redesigned website?
People use the hamburger menu!
All participants clicked on the hamburger menu instead of using the homepage/footer to look for information relating to all the 3 tasks.
Information is discoverable
Although it took a while to find information, participants, it was observed that most of the were able to discover the information they were asked to look for.
The website is visually appealing
42% of participants expressed that they like the layout, the size of the buttons, and the feedback provided by the interactive elements.
Keyword retention helps with navigation
42% of participants expressed that although it took time for participants to understand the navigation, some participants were able to remember certain keywords they had seen and make sense of the navigation by recalling what they saw (Apply, rankings, etc).
SUS Report
Participants expressed some challenges they faced while performing the tasks
SUS score results
pratt.edu has a below-average SUS score, which means that the website needs major UX improvements.
68%
Average SUS score
58.6%
pratt.edu mobile website SUS score
28.6%
The Pratt.edu mobile website has a better SUS score than 26% of all websites.
The Pratt.edu mobile website has a better SUS score than 26% of all websites.
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a reliable tool for measuring the usability of a wide variety of products and services, including hardware, software, mobile devices, websites, and applications. It is a 10-question survey with response options on a scale of 1 - 5 (1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree).
Highlights reel
Highlights showcasing challenges users faced as well as things they liked
Analysis and Synthesis
The key problems that were noticed
Based on the insights gathered from testing 7 participants, the problems noticed and depending on their severity. We decided to focus on 3 major areas of concern and made recommendation for it These 3 main area are:
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Content Organization
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Complex Information Architecture
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Unclear Information
Insights and Recommendations
Insights 1A: Content Organisation
Current Design
5/7 participants found the content on program pages overwhelming and not easily digestible.
" It felt like there is so much information. It is annoying to scroll so much to find the application requirements for my program."
- Test Participant
Recommendation: Organize content in collapsible sections
This will give users a high-level overview of the content of the page, as well as control over which topics they expand to learn more about.
Insights 1B: Content Organisation
Current Design: gaze plot
Users pay attention to the headings, but they do not spend time reading through each paragraph.
Our heat maps showed that users tend to focus more on the headings on the ‘Application Requirements’ page, and have to scroll a lot.
Recommendation: Use bullets, headings, and white space to make content more readable.
"It's much easier to read things online if it's bulleted and spaced out more. "
-Test Participant
Insights 2: Complex Information Architecture
Current Design
Due to missing content on program pages, users have to make assumptions about certain program specifics.
"I should see a few paragraphs about the program, a list of the courses, the duration, and so on, on the program page which are missing currently."
- Test Participant
5/7 participants calculated the duration of a program based on the number of semesters.
" I felt like I had to click through a lot of different things to get to what I wanted, felt like there are many different ways to get to the same thing but it doesn't really feel connected."
- Test Participant
User Flow - Core Courses and Program Duration
These are the steps the participants took to find the core courses and the program duration.
User Flow to find program duration and core courses
Participant talking about there struggle to find information
Recommendation: Highlight program details, and add link to the requirements page
Highlight program duration, core courses, and deadlines along with a link to requirements on the program page.
"It would be easier to have all the application information on the programs page."
-Test Participant
Insights 3: Unclear Information
It’s unclear to users which courses are core and which are electives on the ‘Plan of Study’ page just by looking at the underlines, again pushing users to make assumptions.
"I am assuming that these are the primary courses [while looking at the Plan of Study page] and I assume I chose a linear program, I’ll have to go back to see if there are any other courses."
-Test Participant
Recommendation: Clearly specify which courses are core and which are electives.
In case a program has no electives, make that clear as well.
Client Feedback
The clients were really impressed with the insights we found and the recommendations we provided. They found it interesting that students wished to have all the information, especially about course duration and deadlines. They also mentioned that some of our insights affirmed the internal conversations they were having regarding the difficulties people are facing.
The recommendation about duration and all information on one page was something interesting for the clients as it has not been a part of their internal conversations and it was good for them to know that people are looking for everything one one page.
Next Steps
Future research opportunities
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Conduct user research with a larger sample size.
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Potential to explore other areas of the website e.g. continuing studies, events, courses, etc.
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Further A/B tests / usability testing of the recommendations should be conducted to supplement eye-tracking findings