Revised version of a t.ux Activity

Applying The Research Findings

We had several concerns we needed to address after conducting our research. I realized that we had structured the content of our Activities all wrong. I determined that the following changes HAD to be made, and we needed to re-iterate on the Activities themselves.

1. We needed to orient our users

2. We needed to restructure our content to make it:

   • Easier to read

   • Faster to get through

   • Easier to comprehend

   • More engaging to our users

3. We needed to address the awkwardness of the question tiles that looked interactive but were not

Solution 1: Orienting Our Users

The initial solution to orienting our users was a random idea presented during group iteration. The question was posed:

“What if we add a page before the Activity that gives them more context and tells them what to expect?”

One of my colleagues designed the pre-activity page (you can see it in the 1.0 prototype I shared because it was added to the original). You can also see it below:

It didn’t work.

In fact, during testing, this page made our users more uneasy. Several of them said things like:

“Wow, there are some significant spelling errors here. This is an educational activity? That’s off-putting.”

It was poorly designed and it didn’t do anything to help orient our users. So I floated the idea,

“What if we added secondary navigation to the Side Nav Bar?”

Our Senior Designer thought that was the best idea he’d heard all day (or that’s how I remember it anyway), and let me run with it.

The Side Navigation Bar - Redesigned

A lot went in to the redesign of the side navigation bar. Let’s just say I really went to town on that sucker. I could do an entire case study just on said redesign. But, that is for another day. I will drop this little nugget, however, if you want to take a look at the specs and how it works.

Usability tests conducted after the implementation of this side navigation bar confirmed it’s efficacy, as none of the users reported any disorientation and all could effectively report where they were within an Activity using the Side Navigation. In fact, users were finally using the side navigation to both orient themselves and also to travel to former sections of the Activity.

The addition of the secondary navigation to the side nav bar worked!

Solution 2: Restructuring and Strategizing the Content of Activities

Our work was not yet done. The Activities were being tested weekly and still taking well over an hour to complete, or being abandoned long before they were done. Remember:

• Users were hung up on the content, skimming over the content, and generally not grasping the concepts

• Users were dismayed at the amount of reading they had to do

I was especially interested in solving this issue.

I thought of 3 potential ways to address this problem:

1. Edit and Pare Down The Text

My first idea was to try paring down and editing the text to make the activities shorter. I’m not a writer. I don’t claim to be a UX writer (although this project has certainly improved my ability to contribute to content). But we didn’t have a Content Strategist on the team yet, so it was up to me to figure it out.

I did my best to cut out redundant words, to chunk text and add hierarchy, but I just wasn’t able to shorten the Activities effectively in this manner.

It was an epic fail. I had to move to the next solution.

2. Do Research - Competitive/Comparative Research & Research How People Learn

I took several learning activities on multiple platforms. My favorite (by far) was Babble. I realized they were teaching using a technique that involved introducing a concept, then, once you got the gist of the concept, they’d have you practice to solidify the concept. They built on your knowledge of a language in the same way you’d see a baby learning language.

I also researched how people learn. One of the more popular strategies was called the “Tell, Show, Do, Apply” strategy.

💡A lightbulb went on in my head.

We were doing it all wrong. I didn’t have to give the users ALL the information at the same time. I could give it to them over time in bite-sized, digestible pieces. I’d start with the foundational knowledge, have them practice the concepts, and then build upon each concept in future, more advanced-level Activities, just like Babbel. Doing this I’d be able to continue clarifying knowledge and assessing their knowledge over time.

We could accomplish this in the following way:

I came up with this flow to show my Product Manager what I was thinking of doing with the cadence of the Heuristics Activity.

Rather than information dumping onto the users, I wanted it to be a clear-cut, concise way to build on their knowledge of the topic at hand. I was able to then re-build Accessibility and Heuristics using the above strategy as my guide. Which brings me to my 3rd and final strategy toward making the Activities shorter and easier on the learner:

3. Break Up Long Activities into Parts

Even after greatly reducing the content, chunking information, adding bullet points, etc., Heuristics still has 10 principles that need to be taught and practiced. While researchers can’t seem to agree on the exact number, several articles on the topic agree that the average adult has a maximum attention span of about 20 minutes. If I want to help facilitate learning, I have to present the information in 20 minutes or less.

In order to further shorten the Activities, I broke both into 2 parts.

Content Editing

Knowing that I was only building the very foundational Activities for the two topics at hand, I was able to reframe how the content was presented.

• I no longer felt the need to overload users with all of the information on each topic.

• I was able to really focus on the key points of these topics, and give them a broader overview.

• I wanted to allow users to learn by Doing - so I gave them Questions with good vs bad examples (something they had specifically requested)

Below, you can see for yourself the difference in content.