Content of the page
Hybrid card sorting
After the open card sorting and competitor’s review, my focus was to define how people would label and group the content apart from those five common categories.
I prepared 54 cards, adding more words and phrases from the opportunity area and reduced apparent words and phrases that are already tested.
My choice of the method is a hybrid card sort with the combination of 5 given categories and let the participants create and label groups that they would expect to find on usability focused website.
Recruitment the participants: through Optimal Workshop for quantitive insights
- 85 participants from Australia
- Diverse in age; the highest percentage from 25-34-year-old range (28.2%)
- 52.9% employed; remaining participants scattered
- Diverse education level, 24.7% with “Senior Secondary certificate” and “Bachelor Degree”
Data analysis
The good thing about Optimal Workshop is data visualisation. You can eye-scan the data to understand the grouping, and labelling easily. They offer a heat map(Similarity Matrix of the Combined Participants), Standardisation Grid for this. I find it is necessary to go through ‘Categories table’ and group similar categories while you are checking how individual participants group the cards and label them.
I also find that making your decision only from their Recommended IA is not a good practice. I advise you to use it as a reference for a better outcome.
The quantitative data for draft IA
Similarity Matrix of the Combined Participants
” The following similarity matrix (representing the combined participants) compares two cards and scores them based on how many participants agreed with the pair. Darker/higher numbers signify a stronger relationship between the card above the number and the card to the right of the number.” -Optimal Workshop
Standardisation Grid
“The following standardisation grid(representing the combined participants) shows how many participants grouped the cards on the left into the categories on the right. The Darker/higher numbers signify a stronger relationship between the cards and the categories.” -Optimal Workshop
Findings & draft site structure
It appears that this card sorting was hard for the participants. We assume that it is the subject matter that most participants do not have knowledge of Superannuation and had a difficult time to put the card in order. Although, the focus group from the research phase does not want to call themselves Working Class. Here is the opportunity area of IA to address it further:
“How might we help to educate the audience in the context when they need the information?”
Recommendations from the card sorting results
• Using the 7 top categories to inform the overall structure of the website
Superannuation
Investments
Insurance
For Employers
Retirement
Advice & Support
Forms & Resources
• Advice & Support’ – add as the first-level category to
Main Menu
• Change the current label of category, ’Resource’ to ‘Forms & Resources’
• ‘Compare Us’ – don’t add as the first-level category to
Main Menu. Rather put relevant comparison content
on Homepage and respective product pages
• ‘About Us’ – don’t add as the first-level category to Main
Menu. Rather place as a secondary page (Utility)
TreeJack Testing
Testing overview
- TreeJack testing conducted using Optimal Workshop.
- Consisted of 7 main tasks
- (4/7 asked for feedback on ease of performing the main task)
- Included 3 follow-up questions about the participants’ previous experience with other superannuation sites
- Tree labels: First & sub-level menu categories; key content
Goals
- Test how easily and quickly users can find the information they need
- Find out if proposed Tree labels make sense to users
- Find out if the content is grouped logically
Participants
- 19 respondents including 6 x retirees and 9 x ESL (English as Second Language)
It is the time to revisit the findings from the secondary research and the discovery phase to understand users and their needs before testing.
The lead designer and I sat down and started to work on the user’s Jobs To Be Done. We went to through the Personas again and we had to think about what users typically do on a superannuation website. Here is the list of user’s tasks.
Note: ‘Manage’ and ‘Check Balance’ are not typically tasks performed by a user who is just browsing, as it requires membership (i.e. user needs to Login or Join)
Persona-based user tasks became a base for content design, TreeJack testing and developing the User Journey Map later on.
How Might We
The tasks and the previous research in mind, we focused on the opportunity area with How Might We (HMW):
- HMW offer information/support relevant to life moments?
- HMW educate the audience in the context when they need the information?
- HMW educate on the role of the property with Super?
- HMW provide information on options and rights in redundancy, and support people to manage large sums of money?
- HMW empower members to understand how the elements of Super can impact/benefit them – now and in the future
- HMW encourage members to see the benefit of engaging with their Super now?
- HMW make the benefits of contributions more tangible?
- HMW increase the visibility of and access to the knowledge BDMs (Business Development Managers) and Advisors have?
- HMW tailor content to help them plan for their futures and in-case-of scenarios?
Tree testing tasks
According to the user tasks we explored and based on the draft site map that I created earlier, I set up 7 questions to test out the tree. They are the most crucial information that the users would look for.
Tasks not included in the testing
- The content that sits in the prominent location
- Common CTAs such as Join and Contact Us.
- Tasks relating to information explicitly called out on the Home page, such as fees & costs
- Insurance (no usability tested from IA perspective)
- For Employers (unclear audience needs/goals)
- Tasks that are required login to members’ site
The questions are about ‘Investment Performance’, ‘Eligibility of early Super release’, ‘Changing jobs’, ‘The risk level of investments’, ‘Download a guide booklet’, ‘Find Calculators’ and ‘Where to educate yourself’ as below.
- You have been retired for a few years, and have a diverse range of investments of your choice with this company. Where would you check in to make sure it’s still performing?
- You have recently turned 50, found yourself out of work and facing financial difficulty. You heard from a friend that you could withdraw lump-sum from your super. Where would you find out whether you are eligible?
- You have just started a new job, and you need to provide your new employer with your super fund details. Where would you find the information you need?
- Your accountant friend recommended the investments at your Super company. You think it is a good idea to invest safely without risk. Where would you find the information about the risk level?
- You are considering changing Super company since most of your colleagues have the same Superannuation. You don’t know much about this company and would like to know more about it before making a decision. Due to the working condition, you are not accessible to the internet much, so you prefer the printed version of the guide. Where would you find the booklet to download?
- You are planning retirement. You want to know how much income are you likely to have after you retire and what you can do to boost your super. Where would you find the tool to calculate it?
- You hadn’t really thought about your Super until recently. You feel that you need to do ‘something’ with it, but you are not sure where to start. You decided to educate yourself about what is Super and how it works from the start. Where would you look for the content?
Task questionnaires
I added these four questions for each task above to get some feedback.
- Can you find the information you want easily and quickly?
- Do the labels make sense to you?
- Is the content grouped logically?
- Comment here
If you had any difficulty with the test or have some feedback for us, tell us about what it is, why and what you would do to make it better.
Follow up questions
- Have you visited a super fund’s website in the past?
- What did you go to the website to do and what information were you looking for?
- Have you joined a super fund through the website?
Findings
Content closely related: Retirement, Investment, Insurance, Superannuation
Participants’ behaviour indicated they directly/indirectly visit ‘Superannuation’, looking for information significantly. Eg) To download a guide booklet, most went to ‘Forms & Resources’ and some went to ‘Super’.
“Just thinking would it be a bad idea to place booklet in top level Super section as well. It would be nice to access this booklet from different appropriate sections/subsections instead of just one location.”
-What user says
Find calculator task shows good success rate but many different paths are taken. Not many people went to ‘Forms & Resources’ it appears that they expect calculators to embedded within the content on relevant pages. Also, people seem confused about what calculators should be used when.
Where to educate yourself task shows the lowest success rate. People expect the learning materials on the relevant pages more than going to look for a separate section -it is a repeated user behaviour!
Also, some say:
“Some people don’t know about the Premix , DIY mix option , if there is a blinker indicating information about what that is , it would be useful.”
-What user says
According to the follow-up questions, 94.4% of the participants have visited a Superannuation website in the pats and 72.2% of them have not joined a Superfund through the website. The reason to go to the website and the information they were you looking for is pretty much the same as Online User Tasks that I came out with as hypothesis.
Solutions
When I presented IA before the design phase to the stakeholders, I showed them the findings and provided my recommendations with 4 sectors, ‘Keep Label’, ‘Change Label’, ‘Change Content’, ‘Content available in other categories’. I also delivered the solutions, final IA and content hierarchy for the product pages. The overall recommendations are as below.
Key life moments as more personalised service – offers information and support that is relevant to the key events that prompt people to look at their finances and Superannuation.
Tools and resources, technical terms, tips and contact details should be located on every page as a default.
‘Advice(& Support)’ as the main menu and ‘Learn’ goes under
‘Employers’ and ‘About Us’ as a secondary menu
Use the common, accessible language especially for the main menu (1st level) and change ‘Super’ to ‘Superannuation’.
Better have descriptions of how it works and their purpose such as how your investment returns are calculated and what they are for.
It solves the problems:
- Use of jargons and acronyms when the main audience is working-class
- The content is not organised, the duplicated on many pages and closely related content to the different products.
- Users expect the information they are looking for on the page they are looking at rather than going to the separate menu
- The numbers of calculators, resources and media content are stacked in one page without any descriptions
- Business-focused structure and content
Refer IA delivery in details
LUCRF Website Solutions based on empirical research and analytics on doc file.
Refer the content hierarchy for product pages on the doc file.
Visual Design
I delivered my IA work to the visual designer for concept design. By the time they were designing UI, I was busy working on another project. Although, I helped them, giving online feedback on their design over the period time. Special thank to the visual designer for their great work. The outcomes look like these.
with learning materials, CTAs, relevant resources and the contact
Thank you so much for your time, reading the long showcase.