Usability Testing
for Grassroots Grocery
by Guillermo Ramirez, Evelyn Mukherjee,
Alfredo Gutierrez Alcantara and Sebastian Hunt
Client
Grassroots Grocery is a New York City based, non-profit organization. Its values stand on neighbors helping neighbors, fighting for dignified food and giving access to everyone in need. That’s why their main activities consist in volunteers packing groceries and distributing them around different neighborhoods.
At this time, Grassroots Grocery is looking to expand their community of volunteers and one of the strategies to do so is through their new website. They want to know users are welcome and feel invited to be a part of the grassroots family, as well as they would like for everyone to know what grassroots stands for.
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Process
Define goals and targets with client
Recruit participants
Analyze the data
Design screening questions as well as the test based in tasks
Conduct User Testing
Prepare final report and presentation
Goals & Methodology
After listening to the client's interests about how and what he wanted to convey to the users of the website, we agreed to design the test focused on the following two goals.
1. Measuring and Improving Clarity of Involvement Options
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Are visitors to the website being made clearly aware of the various ways they can volunteer and contribute?
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Is there any missing information or other forms of barriers preventing people from volunteering?
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Can the content or information architecture be improved to make the various offerings clearer and more inviting to website visitors?
2. Measuring Site's Ability to Communicate Grassroots Grocery's Core Values
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Do visitors feel that GG is a family-friendly organization where children across age groups can easily get involved?
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Is the community and grassroots-oriented nature of GG's work coming through clearly?
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Can the website improve the communication of its values to better resonate with those looking to get involved?
The way in which we gathered all of this information was through conducting a Moderated User Testing, in which we gathered 8 different participants from certain target audiences and made them go through a set of 12 tasks to be completed on the GG website. The results of these testing was then analyzed and presented to the client with the major findings and recommendations on things to do or change.
Recruitment
In agreement with the client since our first meeting, we decided on three different target audiences we wanted to test.
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People who were interested in volunteering but had not yet volunteered.
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Active volunteers who were looking for new volunteer opportunities and had not heard of Grassroots Grocery
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Active Grassroots Grocery volunteers who have had limited contact with the website
To recruit users, different groups of people living in NYC and its surroundings were contacted through email and phone, then scheduled for testing depending if they passed a screening questionnaire.
Insights
Overall, we noticed that the tested users moved around the page freely without any major problem and very little concerns.
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The top aspects the users liked were the graphics, colors and imagery
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The values of the organization are very well represented in their website
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It was very easy to donate, one of the users I interviewed even gave out 60 dollars during her testing.
However,
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The site seemed repetitive and felt tedious to users because of the number of pages they had to go through
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It was very hard to find useful information because of the same matter or even because of the lack of details
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Signing up for volunteering events, apart from frustrating, was sometimes impossible due to the confusing design of the sign up forms and buttons.
Results and recommendations
After our analysis was finished, we selected five main issues on the usability of the website, and gave recommendations to the client so those issues could be fixed in the future. Here’s the list:
Recommendation #1
Issue: Potential volunteers had difficulty trying to find new and different volunteer opportunities since they felt there were a lot of pages with these opportunities. They were not even sure if they found them all.
Proposed Solution: A single page, where all of the opportunities are
listed clearly, without having to move between different pages, should be created.
An ideal way to get to this page would be by clicking on the Get Involved menu. Users will be able to see all volunteer opportunities and details on one page, making
it easier for them to decide which one to sign up for.
Recommendation #1
Issue: Potential volunteers had difficulty trying to find new and different volunteer opportunities since they felt there were a lot of pages with these opportunities. They were not even sure if they found them all.
Proposed Solution: A single page, where all of the opportunities are
listed clearly, without having to move between different pages, should be created.
An ideal way to get to this page would be by clicking on the Get Involved menu. Users will be able to see all volunteer opportunities and details on one page, making
it easier for them to decide which one to sign up for.
Recommendation #1
Issue: Potential volunteers had difficulty trying to find new and different volunteer opportunities since they felt there were a lot of pages with these opportunities. They were not even sure if they found them all.
Proposed Solution: A single page, where all of the opportunities are
listed clearly, without having to move between different pages, should be created.
An ideal way to get to this page would be by clicking on the Get Involved menu. Users will be able to see all volunteer opportunities and details on one page, making
it easier for them to decide which one to sign up for.
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Recommendation #2
Issue: The Fill a Fridge volunteer option, while popular, held little to no follow through due to there being no information about where the fridges were located.
Proposed Solution: We propose to place a map in which the users
can view the available community fridges around the city.
It would also be ideal if they showed the current status of each fridge. With locations listed, users will be able to fully take this volunteer opportunity into account
and will be able to better plan ahead if they wish to fill a fridge.
Recommendation #3
Issue: Although all the types of volunteering opportunities were listed, the logistics of these events or what happens at these events (in detail) is unknown to some of the users. Leading
to more confusion than interest.
Proposes Solution:
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Fill a fridge: Provide a detailed description of how community fridges work and the process of donating food to the local fridges.
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Group Volunteering: Provide a detailed description of how group volunteering events work. A summary of previous group events would be very helpful.
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Produce Party: Provide a detailed description of the in-person event including location, time, and what each volunteer position entails.
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Recommendation #4
Issue: The information of the actors involved with the organization (Team, Grassroots Grocers, Food Justice Committee) being spread across different pages is a barrier for the users to learn about Grassroots Grocery as a whole.
Proposed Solution: Design a landing page that combines the three groups of people that make Grassroots Grocery. There should be a description of how they work together.
Each group should also be clickable so the user can learn more about the people of each group The consolidated information will help the user see the different ways Grassroots Grocery makes their impact.
Recommendation 5
Issue: Across the site, there is a huge amount of different forms in which the users can sign up.
Apart from getting the user confused because of their similarity, they are also misleading since
some of the CTAs don't have clear labels .
Proposed Solution: Consolidate all the forms into one master sign-up form with options to select the type(s) of volunteering the user is interested in.
It's also essential that this form is as short as possible, ideally, one single page, to reduce overwhelm.
Upon submission, there should also be a clear message giving the user immediate feedback and validation that they will be responded to.
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Conclusion
The execution and results of this investigation were, in my opinion, very well done. The client, who had very high expectations, ended up happy and grateful for the work that the team did for Grassroots Grocery.
Definitely something I learned from this specific project was, in addition to conducting moderated user testing, learning to understand a client's interests and ideas in order to deliver high-quality work.