Skokie Park District
Background
Skokie Park District is an entity responsible for the various parks, venues, events, and programs in Skokie, Illinois, and several other areas surrounding Chicago. SPD came to my company with the desire to get a proposal for a site-wide redesign, including a design system and information architecture. I led a team consisting of two other UX Designers to conduct user research, stakeholder interviews, generate personas, and assist with the design of a homepage mockup. With the artifacts that my team produced, we were able to provide Skokie with a cost estimate for them to use to submit an RFP for development work on their website.
Challenge
Skokie Park District’s original website homepage.
After leading two separate, day-long, stakeholder interview sessions, it was determined what the business side of the Skokie Park District was looking to accomplish by bringing Breakthrough Technologies on to assist them with their website. Primarily, we were hired to conduct a user experience audit of www.skokieparks.org and provide the district with recommendations for what they needed to address for their upcoming site redesign slated for 2017 - 2018. We determined that Skokie Park District needed a full UX discovery workup to help reveal what was working well for their site, and issues to address that they could put out an official requisition for work. Over the next month or so, my group conducted the UX audit and discovery workup and provided the stakeholders with documentation, user study videos and analysis, sample personas, a possible budget, and a sample high-fidelity mock-up consideration.
User Testing
Based on some general user information, provided by the Skokie Park District stakeholders, and the site analytics our UX team was provided with, I was able to determine some of the most popular tasks performed on the site. To test the usability of the site, I forged seven tasks for testers to complete. Utilizing UserTesting.com, the other I created screener questions to help find several appropriate participants to test Skokie Park District's current site. The screener questions yielded five participants, of varying ages and gender, within the Chicago area based on certain desirable criteria.
Once the participants passed the screener questions, they were able to start the tasks and explore the website remotely. While they performed the task, the users were asked to speak their thoughts aloud while the UserTesting.com software recorded their actions and their audio. After all the tasks were completed, the other UX Designer and I each went through the videos separately, coding notes and creating clips that highlighted the positive observations and the pain points encountered by the participants. After reviewing each video, we found the following commonalities among the experiences of the testers:
Positive Findings
Test participants enjoyed the use of color throughout the site.
The plethora of details regarding the park-related subject matter was greatly appreciated.
The ability to purchase tickets for events and sign up for classes appealed to the testers.
Pain Points
Registration / Login
To register for a class/program, pay off invoices, or access account information, one needed to register with the site or log in to their account, however, most of the test participants struggled with locating the login feature.
Park-specific Information
Many users come to the site to locate information about specific parks, which are hidden in the current site's numerous select boxes.
Though the testers eventually found what they were looking for, they often took many missteps and ended up on the wrong pages.
Filtering & Locations
The names of the filters confused the testers and often led them away from their intended path.
After selecting a location filter, testers expected to see programs and classes listed along with the name of the location.
The map displayed the location with what appeared to be random icons without a key or legend to indicate what they meant.
Search
The search appears to be partially broken.
At times, testers would perform a search and return 0 results or it would return results that were not related to the keywords the tester searched upon.
Recommendations
Registration / Login
Establish global registration and login functionality that is accessible in the same location throughout the site.
Better integrate registration with the rest of the site, given most testers never made it to the registration page.
Park-specific Information
Make the call to actions directing users to park-specific information more prominent, and intuitive, on the homepage and the page dedicated to programs and places.
Filter & Locations
Rename the filter sections, combine them, or rework the feature altogether.
When a specific location is filtered on, display information relevant to that location (i.e. programs, hours of operation, special events, etc).
Search
The search feature needs to be entirely reworked and the content needs to be tagged to return relevant results for users.
Persona Generation
From the stakeholder interviews, site analytics, and the user test data, I was able to distill three main personas for the stakeholders to consider when deciding what to include in their redesign. Working in part with the UX Designer to display the information in a coherent, and visually appealing manner, I provided each of the personas with characteristics, a short biography, goals, frustrations, desired tasks and influences / behavioral considerations that would influence their use of the Skokie Park District website.
Jackie Titus, Working Mom
Our findings proved that many users of the current site were working mothers looking for programs to place their children in, enroll in classes for themselves, and to get more involved with the community. We established the persona of "Jackie Titus" as the ideal Working Mother that Skokie Park District needed to target.
Jorge Robles, Fitness Enthusiast
Another major persona type were individuals seeking to use the Skokie Park District site to discover ways of getting, or remaining, fit. These people were interested in engaging in an active lifestyle via gyms, pools, and biking / running trails near them. We dubbed this individual the Fitness Enthusiast and used "Jorge Robles" to bring this persona to life.
Omar Abduladi, Nature Enthusiast
The last persona belonged to individuals who were interested in the environment offered by Skokie Park District. These people were seeking to explore the parks and the natural world contained within the city and surrounding areas. They also sought to apply for jobs through the site and needed a voice to speak to the large offering of professional opportunities available at the Skokie Park District. We created "Omar Abduladi" to represent the “Nature Enthusiasts” using the site and to ensure that they were kept in mind as the site was being redesigned.
Recommendations
Based on our own professional analysis, and the findings that were inferred from the user tests we conducted, we came up with some subjects for Skokie Park District to keep in mind as they began to budget and plan for their site redesign.
1. Modernized Site Aesthetic
Overhaul the look and feel of the entire site.
Create a comprehensive set of visual elements for web and physical Skokie Park District materials.
Establish a seamless aesthetic integration between Skokie Park District content and third-party systems.
Enhance customer interaction with content and the Skokie Park District, as a whole, by visually engaging users.
2. Responsive Design
Content does not currently scale based on the resolution of the viewing device.
The goal is to cater to the majority of the site's visitors that are using mobile devices and tablets.
By utilizing a responsive design, the site will maximize the use of screen real estate for all devices while simultaneously prioritizing the presentation of visual elements and functionality.
3. Enhanced Navigation
Make the navigation more intuitive by renaming the main nav labels and reorganizing content so that the effort required to locate desired content is minimized for users.
Increase the pathways to the content throughout the site.
4. Enhanced Search
Ensure internal search result rankings more accurately depict content that is most sought after by customers.
Filters and the faceted search will simultaneously boost search performance and eliminate undesired results.
Mock Up Process
Sketch
After completing the stakeholder interviews, an audit of the site map, a card sort for the navigation, user testing, competitive analysis, and a heuristic evaluation, I worked with the UX Designer to begin whiteboarding some ideas that we believed would improve Skokie Park District's homepage. We drew out several sketches, including this one:
Mockup
After generating several whiteboard designs, the team settled on one to move forward with to make a high-fidelity mockup out of. With the mock-up, we addressed the Registration / Login issue, the desire to display the site in other languages, a cohesive design, featured content, prominent call to actions, refactored information architecture, news articles, upcoming events, a bridge to Skokie's social media pages and provided an area for the "Omar Abduladi" persona users to apply for jobs with the district.