Cooper Hewitt Museum
Usability Evaluation
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Cooper Hewitt is one of America’s top design museums. Inclusive, innovative, and experimental, the museum’s dynamic exhibitions, education programs, master’s program, publications and online resources inspire, educate and empower people through design. The museum is currently embarking on redesigning its website, which serves as a digital representation of the museum to attract more visitors.
The goal of this project was to evaluate the usability of the website based on specific tasks, such as discovering information about the museum, discovering content that the museum creates, and navigating through the museum collections.
Tools
Google Analytics, Google Survey, Adobe XD
Design Team
Richa Kulkarni ,Nicole Tominaga, Mikkey Tokuhira, Olaide Ajomagberin, Sunayana Kesari
Timleline
Oct 2019 - Dec 2019
Discover User
The target user profile for the study was characterized as museum-goers. Museum-goers from various backgrounds with a general interest in art/design and/or in visiting museums were recruited. Thus, participants consisted of parents, art and design students, and young professionals.
My Role
Laid out the test plan and scope. Brainstormed the approach and prepared a pre test screener.
Target User
18+
Stays in New York
May/ May not have been to Cooper Hewitt
Have been to other museum
User Testing
My Role
Tested and analyzed video recordings and surveys of 2 participants.
After defining the goals of the user test, the evaluation team chose to test three key features of the museum’s website—the home page, the events page, and the collections page.
Task 1
Take a few minutes to explore the homepage, letting us know anything you find interesting.
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{if not answered yet, ask:} What is your impression of the museum based on the homepage?
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Are you more interested, less interested, or feel the same about visiting the museum after exploring the homepage?
Task 2
A family member is visiting NYC from December 13-18 and bringing along their two children, ages 8 and 10. Find an event at Cooper Hewitt that they might be interested in attending and estimate how much it would cost.
Task 3
After visiting the museum, you became interested in exploring more of Cooper Hewitt’s print collection. Use the website to find three posters made in the United States of America during the 1950s.
Define User Problem
From the results of the study, it was discovered that a majority of the participants had a positive impression of the website due to its use of vivid colors and imagery. However, when it came to finding specific information on the website during the tasks following were the findings.
“[they] couldn’t find what [they] needed easily, and there was a lot of text to go through"
“[t]here was a lot of content on one page, some of it could be distracting”
“Why do I see similar information [repeated] throughout the homepage?”
Ideate Solutions
My Role
Proposed solutions to uncovered usability issues. Designed mock-ups to communicate the solutions visually.
1
Provide background information about the museum by adding ‘About Us’ section on the home page
3
Reduce visual overload on the home page by replacing some images with colored blocks
Place the admission & ticket information at the top to accommodate users’ information needs
2
RECOMMENDATION 1
RECOMMENDATION 2
RECOMMENDATION 3
RECOMMENDATION 4
Include an overview of the museum’s events by adding a calendar at the top of the ‘Events & Talks’ page
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RECOMMENDATION 5
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Future Takeaway
After evaluating the website with ten diverse users, it is clear that the aesthetic and modernity of Cooper Hewitt’s website are appreciated by both first-time and regular visitors. These visual design features set the Cooper Hewitt website apart from other museum sites. The recommendations are build on the visual strength of the website and provide areas for potential revisions based on how their usability tested.
Each recommendation has been created with the goal of condensing and organizing the Cooper Hewitt website for optimal usability.
In future I would like to create different task flow for user belonging to different categories of user target. Taking into consideration of various user I would like to evaluate the usability in terms of accessibility. Increasing the understanding of the database will help to evaluate the content of website.
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