JUX - JOURNAL OF USER EXPERIENCE (UXPA)
Project Overview
Project Information
The JUX website serves as a hub for UX-oriented content and offers a multitude of educational resources. Nevertheless, the website faces several challenges such as the organization and categorization of content, unclear navigation labels, absence of tools for filtering content, basic search functionality, and the lack of features for keeping users informed about new publications. These difficulties have resulted in users experiencing issues with navigation and content discovery. In response, we have taken steps to address these challenges by conducting a content inventory, card sorting exercise, and tree testing.
Duration
3 Months
Overview
Content Inventory, Card Sorting, Tree Testing, Site Maps, Wireframes
My Role
Researcher & Information Architect
Project Type
Group Project
Tools
Team
Hania Khawar, Aliyah Ishmail, Mya Certossi, M'Kai McLachlan, Vanessa Lin, Sanaa Khalil, Sanskar Gupta
Understanding the problem
The content of the website reflects the organization's goals by demonstrating its credibility as a reliable source through references and metadata. However, some issues limit the credibility of information, such as outdated research and a lack of diverse authors. The metadata includes helpful information for users to refind/save/bookmark articles easily. The site's shallow hierarchy structure and broken links affect users' ability to navigate the site and access contact information. Despite these issues, the content provides experiments, case studies, and test results to review new data. The site contains 19 broken links that lead to back-end coding or a 404 error page, and the LinkedIn button on the mobile site directs users to sign up or sign in without access to the JUX profile page.
Understanding the user
In this school project, our team of UX design students researched who our target users are. We then conducted an extensive content inventory analysis to understand target users' needs and their search behaviours. development.
Target Users:
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Experience professionals who research, design, evaluate, and assess products, services, and spaces.​
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Interface/interaction designers, information architects, developers, authors, and writers interested in publishing scholarly content on UX
Information Needs:
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Users need information about empirical findings, usability case studies, opinions, experiences, and reports of successful practices in usability and related fields.
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information about UXPA's education courses, webinars, events, conferences, and job postings.
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Users fall under either Exploratory or Extensive information needs, and authors/writers have Refinding needs for archiving their own reports or articles.
Search Behaviour:
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UX professionals have Exhaustive or Extensive information needs, and require high recall and lower precision results.
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Designers and authors need high precision and lower recall results
Content Inventory
Condensed Website Hierarchy & Structure
Open Card Sort
An unmoderated open card sort study was conducted to improve the information architecture (IA) of the Journal of User Experience (JUX) site using Optimal Workshop. The study had 10 participants from Canada and was completed in under 10 minutes, the majority of participants were able to understand the items and differentiate the cards. The results were analysed using Optimal Workshop's tools. The card items were extracted from a previous Content Inventory study of the website.
Category
The 10 users created a total of 48 categories to classify the 20 cards used in the study. The bar graph revealed that 30% of users created a median of 4 categories each.
Similarity Matrix
The Similarity Matrix using the results of participants from the card sort study conducted with Optimal Workshop indicates strong pairings and groupings. Participants have a clear idea of where items belong and how frequently they were grouped together. The darker shades of blue show a higher level of agreement between users for grouping cards. Additionally, the matrix displays cards that were never sorted or grouped together, which can be helpful in identifying dissimilar content.
Dendrogram
The dendrogram displays the level of agreement among participants on card grouping. The left side shows the cards and the top axis measures the level of agreement. The clusters on the left side have more agreement. Card grouping can be based on date, research, accessibility, and methodology.
Tree Test
We created Tree Test based on data and results collected from a previous Card Sort on the JUX website. We used user needs identified in our Content Inventory to create two tasks and built parent categories based on the labels participants created in the Card Sort study. We used a Similarity Matrix to determine subcategory labels and created labels that corresponded to the clusters and pairings that the matrix revealed. The Tree Test uses broader terms for labels to make them more representative for users who have never visited the JUX site.
Study Tasks
We assigned our tree test tasks based on the user needs we identified in our Content Inventory of JUX. First, we created a task for our primary users; academics interested in conducting research. Next, we created the second task for our secondary users, who might be interested in finding guidelines about publishing their research.
Task 1
Suppose you are completing a scholarly research piece - find research about inclusive and universal design.
Anticipated path: Home-> Articles-> Articles by Topic-> Accessibility
Task 2
Suppose you are a professor who has written a research paper. Where would you look to find guidelines about publishing your research?
Anticipated path: Home-> Call for Papers-> Criteria for Submitting a Paper
Study 1
We needed to measure the percentage of users finding the right category for tasks, the directness of user navigation, and the first click rates for the study. This information would help us determine the effectiveness of both structures and help us learn what needed to be improved between the first and second study; wording and slight structural changes.
Study 2
The changes made to the structure and labeling resulted in a 13% increase in the success rate of the second task. The reworded content helped users to understand the connection between the task and the available options better. However, there was no significant difference observed in the success rate of task 1, and the direct success rate dropped from 78% to 70%. The sample size for the first and second tree tests were 9 and 10 participants, respectively.
Redesigned Site Map
The JUX website's sitemap was revised by analyzing data from card sorting and tree testing. The new sitemap restructures the IA and adds some minor functionalities to better serve users. The main page has been redesigned to include new features like the newest issues, subscribe button, and search bar. The Articles category is divided into subcategories such as articles by volume, date, author, and topic. The "About" category includes sub-options like information on JUX and the editorial staff list. The call for papers page has different sections such as General Info, Submission Guidelines, Review Process, and Review Criteria. The Policies page has two sections on conflict of interest and copyright & attribute guidelines, and all categories can be searched using faceted search.
Medium Fidelity Wireframes
The wireframes consist of four main pages: a homepage, an articles page, an about page, and a call for papers page. In addition, there are three secondary wireframes: a search results page, an article-by-topics page, and a page showing a sample of a peer-reviewed article. These are the most important pages that contain the core of the site's content and functionality.
Homepage
About Page
All Articles Page
Articles by Topic Page
Call for Papers Page
Search Page
Our Recommendations
Navigation System
The proposed solution is a navigation system that adapts to users' needs based on the page they access. It includes a global, local, and contextual navigation menu. The global menu has been simplified to three main options, and the Articles page has a local menu that categorizes articles and anchors the sections of the article. The footer includes hyperlinked texts and social media links, and every page provides breadcrumbs for easy navigation.
Improved Search
information seekers make up the majority of JUX site visitors, , the proposed solution suggests updating the JUX website's metadata to allow users to browse articles by article type using the search bar. The recommendation also includes filters with faceted search types relevant to the user's search, enabling them to retrieve articles efficiently. While published vocabularies derived from specific sources could have been used, the team opted for crowdsourcing due to limited resources, allowing them to be in control of the metadata being used.
Subscribe Button
The proposed solution recommends including a subscribe feature in the next version of the website to enable users to receive email newsletters regularly. This feature would remind users of the journal website and increase the returning visitor rate. However, it would require some manpower to keep up with the notifications.
Bookmarking
A bookmarking feature is recommended to allow JUX site users to backtrack to previously viewed articles using cookies accepted upon entering the site. The feature could also enable JUX to recommend specific content to users based on their browsing history. Two limitations are noted, including the need for users to clear their cache and multi-device use, which may cause the feature to be unusable.