Usability Recommendations

What is Convivo?

"Convivo" is an internet search engine that allows you to find coliving spaces, managed rental homes, backpacking hostels, and workcations all around India.
Students, professionals, males, females, couples, entrepreneurs, digital nomads, founders, and innovators all have spaces available. Convivo can help you find a place to stay near your business, college, or other productive location where you can accomplish remote work with better prices, flexibility, and offers.
experience

Goal

The goal of this study is to:

Offer techniques through User Research and UI design suggestions for increasing website traffic, obtaining new bookings, and improving overall website usability.

To discover existing pain points so that the current site might be improved for target users.

The hypothesis being tested is that the website is currently not behaving in a way that is intuitive for users to navigate in terms of both user interface and content

Problem Statement

My investigation and testing indicate that the site's navigation, inconsistent content hierarchy, and inadequate user interaction are the key usability concerns that need to be resolved on Convivo's website. The majority of the problems that were found throughout the test involved the search bar, cluttering content, search, and the absence of a login form and booking option.

Usability testing methods

The purpose of performing testing is to identify any usability flaws, collect qualitative and quantitative data, assess user satisfaction with the current website, and find remedies to improve customer experience and increase website traffic.

Heuristic Evaluation

User Research

Persona and User Story Creation

Content Inventory

Prototype Usability Testing

Current Site Usability Testing

Prototype Creation

Usability Recommendations

Heuristic Evaluation

This heuristic evaluation is designed to measure the overall usability of the current interface design within the "https://convivo.in". This evaluation contains discovered usability issues within the application based on Jakob Nielsen's 10 general interaction design principles and some of our recommendations for improvement.

Using the Molich & Jeffries severity scale for rating the Severity of Usability Problems, the three-point scale is stated below:

1. Minor: delays user briefly.

2. Serious: delays users significantly but eventually allows them to complete the task.

3. Catastrophic: prevents the user from completing their task.

User Research

For this assignment, I used Google Forms and Interviews to create a survey. At the time I created this report, I had 16 responses from google Forms and interviewing 2 volunteering users, providing them with a specific task to perform, I conducted the interview additionally to note the expression of people and get a better understanding. Not Everyone answered all the questions, but I did get a lot of useful information from the responses. I conducted user research to understand users' needs and mental models while using an online booking platform. The user may or may not have used Convivo or any other online booking platforms.

I intentionally recruited five users, three of whom are potential volunteers and two of whom are regular users of Convivo, for the online survey, in addition to all the people filling up the survey form, to get a better understanding for my research.

Demographic questions revealed that the target users are typically 19 – 35 years old, a mix of male and female, either married or single, and have an educational degree.

I used Google Forms and Interviews to create a survey. At the time I created this report, I had 16 responses from google Forms and 2 from interviewing volunteering users.

Providing them with the specific task to perform, I conducted the interview additionally to note the expression of people and get a better understanding.

Persona and User Story Creation

To get a better understanding, the target audience was divided into three personas based on user research:

Classic traveler
Seasonal traveler
Potential traveler

Content Inventory

The next step was to do a content inventory, to get a list of every piece of digital content we currently have on the Convivo website, captured at either the page or asset level. Which includes specific characteristics of each piece.

The content was judged on its practicality and forms, as well as its type, accuracy, relevancy, and quality.

Critical flaws such as obsolete content, a tarnished reputation, and misleading or false information were identified as red flags.

During the inventory, the main issues detected were the no-booking option and login options.

Methodology

Current Site Usability Testing Materials:

1. Participants consent form

2. Pre-test questionnaire

3. Scenarios and Tasks

4. Post-test questionnaire

5. Observation sheet

6. Script

7. Usability test plan dashboard

A usability test was conducted with five current and potential Convivo site users using test materials.

Zoom was used to conduct the testing remotely.

I explained the purpose of the test at the outset, and participants were asked to complete a consent form and a pre-test questionnaire.

The participant received the form and questionnaire via Google Forms.

The "Think-Aloud" method was used in this test for all of the sessions so that users could feel as comfortable as possible sharing their thoughts about the Convivo site as they completed each task.

Following that, participants were required to complete the tasks assigned by the test taker.

Screen sharing was used to observe click paths, and all tests were recorded using Zoom's recording feature.

Participants were asked to complete a post-test questionnaire, which was shared via Google Forms, after completing the tasks.

The results of the test were compiled in a spreadsheet, which included a rating of the importance of tasks and scope, as well as a rating of the issue based on its impact level.

Prototype Creation

Prototype Link

Using Figma software, medium-fidelity prototypes were created that fixed major and blocker issues that were mentioned in the spreadsheet for the Convivo website, based on all of the previous evaluations.

The website's user interface has been updated with major design changes, including the upgrade of the search bar with various filters to the top navigation bar for easier and faster navigation, and the addition of a booking option.

A log in page has also been added, allowing users to have more personalised with the website.

In addition, the search bar at the top of the home page is provided to improve the user experience.

Conclusion

During preliminary testing of the Convivo’s website, it was discovered that booking and searching for the desired property is difficult. Because an online booking and search platform requires a clear user interface, additional research was required to identify usability issues, identify user needs and goals, perform analysis, and develop recommendations for how to address the issues.

According to research and testing, the site's navigation, inconsistent content hierarchy, and lack of proper establishment of interaction between the site and the user are the main usability issues that should be addressed on Convivo's site.

A low-fidelity prototype was created after identifying the website's issues. One of the main goals of this prototype was to test the new design's content, search feature, and job application page, as well as other changes to address navigational issues.
Users were able to perform all tasks better and much faster after usability testing was performed on the prototype again after it was created.

Recommendations

It is recommended that, in order to effectively address the usability concerns identified in this study, we begin developing solutions, implement those solutions in a planned website relaunch, and then conduct follow-up usability research to ensure our changes remain effective.

Take the suggestions and turn them into designs - Analyze the functionality and elements of the prototype. Refer to the design team for final approval and verification.

Integrate the designs into the website - Launch the new platform in a well-organized and well-planned manner. All of the teams involved, as well as all of the stakeholders, are involved in the initial functionality testing and approval.

Conduct Additional Testing - Before the site goes live, test, test, and retest to identify and correct any usability issues. Testing saves users, developers, and stakeholders time, money, and frustration.

Finish and Launch the New Site - The redesigned website will be ready to launch once the design has been finalized, the content has been updated, and usability issues have been addressed.