UNC Campus Health

Usability Testing

UX Research

project

UNC Campus Health Usability Testing

role

UX Researcher, Moderator

duration

Oct - Dec 2023

team

Norry Lu, Elizabeth Byrd, Ian Gadow, and Xiao Wu

ABOUT

The project was focusing on the Campus Health website, a crucial resource for students' health and well-being. Our team aimed to evaluate the website's usability, ensuring students can effortlessly navigate and utilize essential health resources.

The visuals you see on this page are coming from our final UXR report. It is for showcasing my research reporting ability.

Evaluation Goals

Purpose of the Usability Evaluation:
The following parts of the Campus Health website will be examined as part of this usability evaluation:
● Refill prescriptions
● Health Topics
● Services

Overall goals of the evaluation:
● Are users able to find health services they need?
● Can users access necessary health information?
● Are information straightforward or difficult to find?

Method

Our usability testing approach starts with identifying needs and user tasks, then designing and conducting tests, and concludes with analyzing the data to offer recommendations for Campus Health website improvements.

Tasks

In crafting tasks for usability testing, we focused on creating realistic and actionable activities that truly reflect how users interact with the interface in their daily lives. This approach ensured that participants engage authentically with the website, providing insights that are both qualitative and quantitative. By avoiding any clues and specific interface language in the task descriptions, we made sure the tasks were unbiased, truly testing the site's usability, not the users' ability to follow instructions. This led to recommendations that significantly improve the design and overall user experience.

Task #1: Refilling a prescription at the Campus Health pharmacy

You have a sinus infection and you need to refill your prescription. You have this pill bottle here with you, and your campus health provider told you that you can refill your prescription online at the Campus Health website. Please enter the prescription information to refill, but do not submit the form.

Task #2: Schedule a dental cleaning appointment with Campus-Smiles

You’re a graduate student who just moved to Chapel Hill 3 months ago and it’s been a while since your last dental checkup. Your friend told you that Campus-Smiles Dental Office is an independent affiliate of UNC and they highly recommend it, so you decided to schedule a dental cleaning appointment with them. You do not need to submit or fillout the form and can stop once you have accessed the form.

Task #3: A first-year college student is anxious and looking to join a Mindfulness and Meditation group

You are a first-year student at UNC in your fall semester and you have an upcoming midterm. You are feeling a bit anxious, overwhelmed, and find it difficult to cope with acclimating to the pace of college courses on top of moving away from home. You’ve heard about mindfulness and meditation from a friend and want to try it out so you want to look for a group to join on campus in order to get started. Please try to find the page to the group.

Task #4: Finding the sports medicine and physical therapy appointment phone number

You are a student-athlete at UNC and just received an injury to your lower back that hinders mobility. You prefers to talk to a human rather than dealing with chat-bots or emails. Your pain is not going away and you would like to call someone through Campus Health to answer a few questions about physical therapy and schedule an appointment. Please find and write down the number.

Test Design

1. Pre-Test:
  ● Participants complete a background questionnaire.

2. During Test:
  ● Utilizing the "think aloud" approach for real-time insights.
  ● Participants perform four tasks.
  ● After each task, they fill out a brief After-Scenario Questionnaire (ASQ) using a Likert scale.

3. Post-Test:
  ● Moderator-led debriefing session to capture any additional feedback or insights.

Pilot Testing

We conducted a pilot testing as a preliminary step where we tested the assessment method. This helped us identify issues with the test design, ensuring that the actual study will run smoothly and the results will be reliable.

Evaluation Measures

In our usability evaluation, we chose metrics to objectively assess user experience. These measures were selected for a well-rounded assessment of the interface's effectiveness and user satisfaction.

Insights

In Task #3, users were asked to find a meditation and mindfulness group. The Campus Health website's structure failed to assist users in finding these mental health resources. The website's information architecture in organizing mental health resources the was unclear and not intuitive.

Highlighted in user debriefings, 5 out of 5 participants expected mental health resources under 'Services', a section known for diverse student support. However, these were located under 'Health Topics', a title users associated with articles and tips, not resources.

“Looking for any indication of a support group...not finding that here.”

"I thought 'Health Topics' was blog posts... I get emails from the university about this...disappointing to see it’s not emphasized here."

This disconnect increased task completion time, with an average of 10.2 clicks versus the required 3, and 9.4 pages viewed against 4 needed. This misalignment between titles and content expectations, pointing to a need for a more intuitive categorization and clearer labeling of mental health services on the website.

For additional findings and learnings, please contact norrylu13@gmail.com.

My Learnings

Uncovered the power of pilot testing; it was a game-changer in ironing out initial kinks in our test design, setting us up for smoother main sessions.
Stepping into the moderator role and heading the post-test debriefs was enlightening. The direct feedback was a goldmine for actionable insights.
Sharpened my skills in asking the right questions during debriefs, unlocking deeper layers of user experience and perceptions.
Truly grasped the essence of empathy in UX; witnessing firsthand how users struggled and succeeded, reshaped my approach to design thinking.