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Persona Library Usability Study

My Role

Time

UX Researcher

4 Weeks

Method

Remote Usability Testing

Tools

UserZoom Go
Zoom
Miro

Research Background

As a UX researcher at Global Payments, I recently conducted a usability study on our design website, which houses a valuable persona library. This library is a collection of user profiles, including consumers, developers, and account managers, along with their behavior patterns, pain points, and needs. While the persona library is a crucial resource for empathizing with our users and designing effective solutions, we discovered that it was underutilized by our colleagues. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the website's usability, identify any issues, and provide recommendations for improvement.

Objectives

  • To evaluate the website usability, including the navigation, layout, content, and functionality

  • To discover the pain points, needs, and expectations of the users regarding the website

  • To generate insights and recommendations for enhancing the website

Method

​To gather insights, I conducted remote usability testing with 8 internal participants representing our website's target users, such as designers, researchers, and product stakeholders. Each 1:1 session lasted approximately 45 minutes and involved participants navigating the website, exploring the persona library, finding specific information, and providing feedback on their experience. I recorded the sessions using screen-sharing software and took detailed notes on participants' actions, comments, and challenges. Participants also rated the website's usability on a 5-point Likert scale and answered open-ended questions at the end of the session.

Analysis

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  • Miro board: I used Miro to organize and synthesize the insights I gathered from each session. I sorted feedback by tasks and counted the frequency of each issue mentioned by participants. Each sticky note on the Miro board represented a user voice. This process helped me to strategically prioritize the issues based on the frequency of mentions. It ensured that the most common struggles our users face are the first I take action against.

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  • Thematic analysis: I used this approach to identify the common themes, patterns, and insights from the participants’ feedback. I coded the feedback into categories such as navigation, layout, content, and functionality. I then grouped the categories into themes such as clarity, relevance, usefulness, and satisfaction. I used the themes to generate insights and recommendations for enhancing the website usability.

Finding

  1. Navigation: Participants found the website navigation confusing and inconsistent, with an average rating of 2.4/5. The persona library was difficult to locate due to its placement at the bottom of the homepage.

  2. Search Functionality: Half of the participants expressed a need for a search bar to quickly find specific personas, rating the current search functionality at 2.5/5.

  3. Layout: Some participants felt the layout was too spacious and spread out, making it difficult to quickly grasp essential information about a persona. The average layout rating was 2.6/5.

  4. Content: Most participants found the website content relevant and useful, appreciating the variety of user profiles and concise, easy-to-understand information. The content received an average rating of 3.8/5.

  5. Overall Usability: Participants were generally dissatisfied with the website's usability, with an average rating of 2.8/5.

Impact

The impact of this UX research project was significant and positive for both the website users and the website owners. The research findings led to several improvements and innovations on the website, such as:

  • The library entrance was moved up from the bottom of the page and was bolded to increase its visibility. This made it easier for the users to find and access the persona library from the homepage, and reduced the number of clicks and scrolls required.

  • The layout was rearranged to highlight key information at the first glance without a need to scroll down. This enhanced the readability and usability of the website, and allowed the users to quickly scan and compare the personas without losing context.

  • A new study was initiated to learn about user searching behavior, such as what keywords they use to look up a persona. This study will help the developer team build a smarter search tool that can provide relevant and accurate results for the users, and improve the discoverability and usefulness of the persona library

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