RESPONSIVE WEBSITE

 The NSW Fair Trading provide services directly to individuals and businesses to create a fair, safe and equitable marketplace. In recent years walk-in offices were reduced and their website is now the primary channel to access their services.

Site analysis along with call centre data allowed us to identify primary and secondary user groups. It also informed multiple aspects of the our research e.g. recruitment, scripts, qualitative feedback and quantitative data to be captured. Twenty-one 1:1 interviews took place in multiple regions so the results were a broad representation of NSW residents.

Along with each participant interview, the hypothesis-led research included a usability test with the existing NSW Fair Trading website. Each participant was given a series of tasks to perform and open-ended questions to gain insights on user flow, usability, behaviours and other key performance factors. The UX lead and myself alternated the facilitation and scribing of each session to minimise any bias of the resulting qualitative and quantitive data.

Test observations and findings were synthesised into primary and secondary categories e.g. usability observations, user frustrations.

Our hypothesis-led research identified that the primary method of locating information was resoundingly via search engines e.g. Google, Bing. Interestingly this was contrary to participant behaviour during testing as the main navigation was primarily utilised with many participants unable to locate information when tasked.

The synthesis of all findings were included in a 25 page summary report that informed future designs and kept multiple stakeholders engaged through the initial phases of the project.

Eight personas (four primary and four secondary) were  informed by the interviews with 21 NSW residents. These personas identified key attributes such as frustrations, motivations, goals (jobs to be done) plus their digital proficiency and preferred devices.

Additionally, customer journeys (one for each persona) were created to track the ‘ideal state’ – from initial circumstance through to the process of engagement and completion via various touchpoints. Both personas and journeys acted as a guide for countless design choices including key areas of the (re)development e.g. Information Architecture (IA), navigation, features, content strategy and organisation.

A mobile first approach was taken to insure that the most relevant content and task (jobs to be done) were easily accessible and usable.

The personas and journey maps were heavily utilised during the initial phases of design. I had these artefacts pinned up in my work space so that I could continually reference and maintain empathy of user goals (jobs to be done) and the ideal path to achieve them. This guided and informed choices across the entire range of primary and secondary archetypes (users) – from  initial sketches through to final designs.

A number of key findings from our initial research informed the many design considerations which were focused on:

• search visibility
• elevation of core online services
• improved navigation and management of third-party links
• simple and clear visual hierarchy
• contextual entry points

Two significantly different designs were created and (A/B) testing was performed to maximise participant feedback and clearly understand participant preference regarding usability in the short timeframe allowed. The findings informed design iterations which were then tested in a second and final round of testing.

The synthesis of all findings were included in a summary report that informed multiple stakeholders and final iterations prior to completing the detailed designs.

From the initial round of benchmark testing through to the final round of testing, we asked participants their willingness to recommend the NSW Fair Trading website to their friends, relatives or colleagues based on their experience during testing. An increase of +83 points is a considerable and illustrates the immense capability of UX methodologies.

The final wireframes are currently awaiting detailed designs and implementation.