NEWFIELDS

The study of the Newfields beta website was part of the rebranding initiative for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The evaluation was performed in two rounds prior to the launch of the website and rebrand in the fall of 2017.

The goal of this study was to identify issues with communication of basic information (location, hours, etc.), with the transactional experience of buying event tickets and purchasing a membership, signing up to receive the newsletter, and with planning a visit to the facilities.

OBJECTIVES

• Identify issues with communication of basic information (location, hours, etc.).
• Uncover pain points in the transactional process of buying event tickets and purchasing a membership.
• Find any problems when signing up to receive the newsletter.
• Uncover pain points when planning a visit to Newfields.

METHODS USED

• Usability Testing and Evaluation
• Task Based-Scenarios
• Severity ratings based on Heuristic violations
• Levels or Success, Single Ease Question, and SUPR-Q metrics

Seven individuals in total participated in this study, alternating between digital and mobile devices. During the moderated usability sessions, participants were asked to perform a set of semi-structured tasks. Throughout the scenarios, we observed user behavior and verbal feedback as well as tracked various metrics.

FINDINGS

Findings from the usability sessions ranged in severity, but a majority were found to be imperative to fix.  The following shows some of the most severe issues uncovered.

Calendar:

Participants used the calendar and talked about the calendar as if they were comfortable with it and it was easy to use. They did voice frustration with having to scroll right several times in order to see future months. In addition to this frustration, many also made erroneous assumptions. Those assumptions include:

• grayed out dates across the top means the museum is closed, and
• the events listed in the scroll are all of the events happening at the museum.

Users expected to see a full week of events at a time and all events to appear under each date. They also expected infinite scroll – vertical scroll to keep adding dates as long as they kept scrolling. About half of the participants voiced this specifically, the other half scrolled to the bottom and then verbalized the assumption that they had exhausted the current calendar of events. Zero participants made any mention of the dots or what they might signify. Participants almost exclusively ignored the events in the right-side panel.

Search and Search Results:

The act of locating and executing the search function was without issue for all participants who utilized it and was most often utilized after other navigation options were exhausted.

The results, however, were often disappointing to participants. When they searched for the newsletter, there was one relevant result, but it led to a page that says “Enewsletter Form*” with no link to sign up for the newsletter. Another example is that the search for “Winterlights” returned events results but not calendar results. The search functionality also doesn’t seem to allow for misspellings, synonyms, or phrases. A search for “Portraits of the City” did not return the expected Portraits of our City exhibit and a search for “holiday lights” did not return the expected Winterlights event.

INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART – COLLECTIONS

The study of the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Collection website was part of a rebranding and redesign initiative. This study included both the creation of a questionnaire to research the demographics and habits of potential users as well as the creation of a usability study of the IMA Collections website.

OBJECTIVES

• Identify any major (or minor) issues for redesign and refinement
• Identify user habits and behaviors to inform the functionality of the website

METHODS USED

• Questionnaires
• Usability Testing and Evaluation
• Demographics
• Metrics: Levels of Success (LoS), Single Ease Question (SEQ), SUPR-Q

The questionnaire yielded only 5 responses from a list of 69 individuals and the usability study had 9 participants in total. During the remote, moderated usability sessions, participants were asked to perform a set of semi-structured tasks. Throughout the scenarios, we observed user behavior and verbal feedback as well as tracked various metrics.

FINDINGS

Navigation:

Navigating to the collections home page after performing a search proved to be the most difficult task for all participants. Five of the nine participants reported ease ratings higher than that of the actual level of success in completing this task.

When asked to perform this task, seven of the nine participants went straight to the IMA logo in the top right header and two participants went to the “Search the Collection” menu option first.

Content and Context:

Participants found some content offered on the site to be confusing or lacking context. These items included but were not limited to: the location status of the piece, what was available within the collection and the accession number.