Overview

Client

Digital Flyers is a Minneapolis based business that promotes events and businesses by showcasing digital flyers around local establishments. They aim to aid businesses in building brand awareness without breaking the bank all while reducing the amount of paper waste.

Problem

Digital Flyers wants to gain a deeper understanding on how their different users, end users and promoters, use their website. They tasked my team with conducting research to identify areas on their website that could be improved upon.

Solution

My team conducted one interview and pulled notes from two others to inform an interactive prototype in order to give suggested updates on the Digital Flyers website. The key suggestions were a clear and detailed search filter function and an accessible contact form.

  • Roles

    UX Researcher

    Notetaker

    UX Designer

  • Methods

    cognitive walkthrough

    contextual inquiry

    user stories

    prototyping

  • Tools

    Google Sheets

    Zoom

    Figma

  • Deliverables

    cognitive walkthrough

    research script

    prototype plan

    interactive prototype

    prototype tour

 Cognitive Walkthrough

A cognitive walkthrough was conducted to gain a better insight on the usability of the site’s main tasks from an end user’s perspective. Sixteen tasks were given to my team by Digital Flyers and then split among the four of us.

Cognitive Walkthrough

My Tasks:

  1. Watch commercials and Artist Confirmation videos.

  2. Access interactive info like: phone, email, online booking, website, social media, GPS,

  3. Add a Business or event flyer to their own personal calendar

Criteria:

  • Will the user try to achieve the right outcome?

  • Is the correct action visible?

  • Is there a clear connection between the control and the resulting action?

  • Is there sufficient and/or appropriate feedback?

Several pain points were identified and initial recommendations were noted.

User Research

Contextual Inquiry

 My team analyzed two previously recorded contextual inquiry sessions and conducted one over zoom to garner a comprehensive understanding of how real users and customers feel about Digital Flyers’ website. We then synthesized our raw data into an affinity diagram.

Key insights from research:

  • 2 out of 3 users felt that Digital Flyers was not easily accessible to answer direct questions as their chat function was usually labeled offline

  • 3 out of 3 users felt confused by the information architecture especially when it came to searching and filtering flyers

  • 2 out of 3 users felt that there was limited variety in events and businesses offered

The Prototype

 The Plan

I curated three user stories from the research done to inform all planning and execution of an interactive prototype.

User Stories:

  1. As a business owner I want to schedule a time so that I can get tech help in person

  2. As a variety of end users I want to search for specific businesses and events so that I can find them by specific details

  3. As a new person to the Twin Cities I want to get recommendations of things to do so that I can meet new people

 

These user stories were sketched into designs through low and mid fidelity sketches.

Home page and search bar

Events page

 

Services page and appointment form

Before converting these sketches into a digital design I created an information architecture diagram to organize how each user flow would interact with the rest of the site.

 Interactive Prototype

I designed an interactive prototype with Figma to emulate the recommendations I had based on pain points discovered during research.

Home page

 

Events page

 

Appointment form

 

The main changes I suggested were:

  1. Renaming and reorganizing the header with a functional search bar that appears on every page

  2. Redesigning the home page into three sections - upcoming events could have a weekly flyer overview, a spotlight for new businesses that were recently added and a one stop shop for potential clients

  3. Redesigning the events and businesses page to include a detailed search function to easily filter and find specific flyers

  4. Making the contact us link in the footer clickable and available on every page

  5. Creating a make appointment form button on the services as well as reorganizing the services page

 If you enjoyed learning about my work on Digital Flyers, I would love to hear about it! Feel free to shoot me an email. If you are looking for your next User Experience hire, I would especially love to hear from you!