UXPA MN

Minneapolis is building up new forces in the tech world these days, an attractive, suitable and dynamic area for UXers. Creativity and growth are admired in such an atmosphere, and who doesn’t know that growth is not possible without teamwork?

User Experience Professionals Organization is a nearly 30-year old organization that exists primarily to support those who advocate for user experience.

UXPA Minnesota is a local chapter of this organization which considers themselves to be “a community of user experience professionals in the Twin Cities.”

As one of 59 local chapters spread across 30 countries, UXPA-MN provides networking and learning opportunities to all experience levels and disciplines within UX in the local community. The UXPA-MN website exists to communicate about events and membership to UX professionals, people interested in UX, companies who support UX, and sponsors, so it faces a wide range of users.

Purpose of this evaluation project is to improve UXPA-MN website’s function, and get the most out of it. Website has good bones, but needs updating and easier way to feature events and news.

To approach this purpose, a team of 4 members focused on defining goals, conducting remote and onsite evaluation sessions, collecting data and synthesize data to define priority of features which need a redesign.

Goals of usability evaluation are:

1. Assess barriers to membership and the levels of severity of those barriers

2. Identify opportunities in the event sign-up flow that can make it more inviting and accessible

3. Explore ways that the UXPA MN website can foster connection between members

The most interesting part of this project was getting totally different opinions from each evaluation participant, some said it is easy and straightforward and some were hesitant, staring at website content for awhile and sometimes even confused. 

Outcome

Results revealed some features which could be confusing for users and to improve those features could have a significant effect on website function. To highlight organization values which are improvement of networking, simplicity of accessing resources and growth for UX community, some changes were recommended for sign up and membership, event registration and connection tasks and a hi-fidelity prototype of recommended changes were made.

Also a report of findings and recommendation is available here

Method

• Heuristic Analysis

• Brainstorming

• Remote/onsite Usability Testing

• Usability Report

• Think aloud

• Concept Mapping

• Scenarios

  
  

  App/software

• Keynote

• Quicktime

• Axure RP