We migrated our website to a new platform (Placecube) and asked ourselves the question: how can we make sure our website is just as good (if not better) on the new platform?<\/p>\n
The most obvious way was for us to do some user testing on our old site to find out:<\/p>\n
\u00b7 how people search and\/or navigate
\n\u00b7 how long it takes people to reach information or perform a task
\n\u00b7 how difficult or easy they find it
\n\u00b7 whether they completed the tasks or not<\/p>\n
Now we\u2019re preparing to repeat the same user tests to prove that the user journeys are at least as good on our new site \u2014 if not much better!<\/p>\n
We had to work out where to start. We knew we\u2019d be doing all our testing remotely, so we did a bit of research to find out what others have been doing.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, so many people had sprung into action over lockdowns to continue user testing (thanks<\/p>\n
for asking the question on Twitter and Slack). This meant we had quite a few tried and tested methods to base our own testing on:<\/p>\n
\u00b7\u00a0user research and COVID-19 tools and tips on GOV.UK blog<\/a> We used to do lots of user testing and research; spending time in Dorset libraries, leisure centres and even wedding fairs over the years to find out what and how people navigate through certain tasks while we observed and took notes to improve navigation, language and layout among other things.<\/p>\n Trouble is, other things have kind of got in the way lately, like:<\/p>\n \u00b7 moving to a new web platform in 2018 It was so good to get back to it. So here are our top tips for anyone else who wants to get back to user testing.<\/p>\n We used Google Analytics to find our top 10 services and it was really interesting to see how many Covid-influenced tasks had popped up into our usual list. Page views for things like walking routes and country parks had spiked, whereas our usually popular leisure centres had taken a dive. All to be expected considering closed businesses and a push to socialise outdoors.<\/p>\n We looked at previous user testing we\u2019d done during the last migration and created tasks around our top 10 services, things like:<\/p>\n \u00b7 you have a child at a school in Dorset and want to book a holiday in July. Find out what date the schools break up We sent out 2 messages to appeal for user testers; one on our weekly Dorset Council newsletter and another on our Facebook page, with a super short MS Form to capture details.<\/p>\n We got 157 responses!<\/p>\n We were so chuffed as it showed us that people were really interested in helping us improve our website.<\/p>\n We sent out another form to 24 of our volunteers with different 45 minute slots covering times during the day and evening. We decided to send user testers a \u00a310 high street voucher afterwards as a thank you for taking part.<\/p>\n Some things we didn\u2019t think of:<\/p>\n \u00b7 some people changed their mind and wanted to opt out, so we made a mental note to add that option in our next round This one took some dedicated concentration.<\/p>\n As a Microsoft-using council, we were keen to hold our user testing interviews over Teams so that we could screen share and observe what our testers were doing at the same time as talking us through their decisions. But we knew that wouldn\u2019t work for everyone\u2026 and we were right!<\/p>\n We adapted whenever we had to, and found that:<\/p>\n \u00b7 most people used Teams Surprisingly, we had unexpected success from the phone only session as our lovely user was reading out every link he clicked. This alerted us to the fact that there were at least 2 unnecessary steps in a certain journey\u2013 steps that we may not have noticed if we\u2019d simply been watching the screen.<\/p>\n We used MS Forms again to create our user testing task sheet. This was a really important form as we used it for every session with our volunteers to log how they navigated for each task. We logged:<\/p>\n \u00b7 the user\u2019s name We made time to meet most days during our user testing project; to improve our process as well as to compare notes.<\/p>\n We learnt to ask more at the outset about how our testers would prefer to do the user testing. This meant we were able to book the right type of meeting at the beginning.<\/p>\n We kept identifying ways of improving what we logged. We\u2019ve now added these extra fields to our form:<\/p>\n \u00b7 \u2018device used\u2019; there were some users who had issues with different devices that we hadn\u2019t been aware of Both these things helped us work out the best way to lay out information on a page.<\/p>\n This is just the start. We want to use our experience to inform future user testing. We absolutely loved speaking to our users \u2014 real, wonderful residents of Dorset. You cannot beat it.<\/p>\n We\u2019re now creating our own User Testing Playbook at Dorset Council. We know our Service Designers are also big fans of user testing and it would be useful to have a set guidance for everyone to follow.<\/p>\n We used these products to do our user testing:<\/p>\n \u00b7 MS Forms \u2014 as a kind of customer relationship management tool when logging task results Happy remote testing!<\/p>\n Susannah Crossland and Claire Ryan-East<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We migrated our website to a new platform (Placecube) and asked ourselves the question: how can we make sure our website is just as good (if not better) on the new platform? The most obvious way was for us to do some user testing on our old site to find out: \u00b7 how people search… Read more So you want to do remote user testing<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[49],"tags":[43,52,4,27],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/files\/2021\/11\/1_z0ENJSYDc_YsMIgvNY13AQ.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00b7 a user testing report Neil had created following testing he\u2019d done on a Tenants Portal back at Oxford
\n\u00b7 testing over the phone done by our Service Design team<\/p>\nMissing user testing<\/h2>\n
\n\u00b7 local government reorganisation (LGR) when we became Dorset Council in 2019
\n\u00b7 2020 well, Covid<\/p>\nWork out your top 10 services<\/h2>\n
Create the tasks for the user testers<\/h2>\n
\n\u00b7 check which bins are being collected this week at your address. Tell me the day when you find it<\/p>\nAppeal for user testers<\/h2>\n
Book your user testing slots (and sort a fitting reward for your trusty volunteers)<\/h2>\n
\n\u00b7 a couple of people emailed the default address asking if their time slot could be confirmed as soon as possible as they couldn\u2019t hold the slot open indefinitely
\n\u00b7 so many people from our list entered time slots that we ended up with about 30 people per time slot in some cases! We decided we should split our list up next time so that we have a smaller selection to choose from<\/p>\nThink about how you\u2019re going to do the actual testing remotely<\/h2>\n
\n\u00b7 some people preferred Zoom
\n\u00b7 others had no camera or microphone so did the testing over the phone with us, telling us why they were choosing certain links and we followed by navigating in the same way on our laptop<\/p>\n
\n\u00b7 which task we were doing
\n\u00b7 whether they completed or abandoned the task
\n\u00b7 if they thought they\u2019d completed the task successfully or not
\n\u00b7 how long the task took
\n\u00b7 how difficult the user found the task
\n\u00b7 notes on the whole session<\/p>\nLearn and hone as you go along<\/h2>\n
\n\u00b7 how people moved around our site, for example:
\no popular services
\no navigated
\no used search box<\/p>\nUser testing forever<\/h2>\n
Not an advert<\/h2>\n
\n\u00b7 Onedrive to collaborate on EVERYTHING \u2014 was actually really useful
\n\u00b7 Teams for most of our user testing sessions
\n\u00b7 Zoom for users who preferred it
\n\u00b7 Excel \u2014 to analyse the user testing results
\n\u00b7 good old-fashioned snail mail to get our vouchers out to the testers<\/p>\n