Challenge & Research Goals
Last autumn, after experimenting with various tools, Chee Ng, the Digital Product Lead at the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, started looking for an easy-to-use research platform to help their team test prototypes of the new eSmart Schools Portal designs.
eSmart Schools Portal is a digital platform that we built under the funding of the Victorian government in Australia. Our key users are teachers from primary and secondary schools. The new portal was designed to help them track their eSmart journey easily.
eSmart program helps schools and educators build teaching practices and culture around online safety for children and young people. Our whole-of-school program is about helping children and young people stay safe online and empowering positive digital citizens
Being a part of a Facebook UX group, Chee asked the community to recommend a tool, and that’s how he found UXtweak.
The team aimed to find a tool that is easy to set up and use while also providing advanced analytics and recordings of testing sessions. They needed to understand how teachers interact with the new designs for the eSmart Schools Portal and where they face issues.
I've asked them what tools are great for prototype testing because our goal was to test the prototypes with real users. But not just testing, we wanted to be able to record the session, watch what they do, and use analytics to understand how successful they are in terms of completing tasks with the prototype.
Solution
Chee mentions that he likes how easily the Prototype Testing tool is integrated with Figma and appreciates that they don’t need to waste lots of time on the setup, as it’s very intuitive.
We built our prototype in Figma, copy the link and paste it to UXtweak. Then we are able to create some questions and scenarios, build success paths. Then we put it up there and launch the study.
I did all the setup, so for me it’s very easy to use, it's self-explanatory.
Chee also explains the iterative process behind their prototype testing sessions:
We talk to users, run the tests for around two months. For this project, we tested two different designs, and we iterated the design between the tests.
The first one was the initial design in Figma. We tested it with four or five users, they gave us feedback, and then we quickly got that back to the design team. They revised the Figma file, and then we re-uploaded the new design onto the second testing.
Two months later, Chee and the team successfully completed the study, after testing and improving the eSmart Schools Portal design based on the feedback from 20 teachers:
We ended up talking to about 20 teachers. We just shared a link with them on Teams, and then got to watch them interact with the prototype on the recordings. We didn’t need to provide much guidance for them on how to use the tool, because it seems to be quite intuitive, so we've managed to complete all of our prototype testing studies successfully.
Outcome
Chee highlights that they used a combination of quantitative and qualitative data from user tests to improve the initial designs. While analytics were helpful by itself, recordings of the sessions helped to put it all together and really understand how users interact with the product:
The analytics of the tool were very helpful in terms of understanding the success path, how long it takes, and where users click. We managed to wrap up our test within the time frame and then use that test data to help us design the product.
Watching the recordings helped to make sense of it all as well. We were able to understand what the users were actually doing and thinking.
Chee underscores the value of detailed analytics in communicating the importance of user testing to stakeholders. He explains how these insights were crucial for their iterative design process:
The analytics tell us a lot of stories. I sometimes screenshot some of it and then use it to explain to our key stakeholders why it's important to do this testing with end users. After analyzing the results, I prepare a synthesis report to explain the whole outcome of the usability testing.
After the synthesis, we share the findings with our design team. They use this data to improve the design and make the iterations. But we always come back to the synthesis.
UXtweak does help us a lot in terms of collecting the insights, the platform makes it very easy for us.
Chee also shares how surprised the team was at the depth of insights gained from the initial round of testing. The feedback they collected led to significant changes in the initial design:
We were very surprised at how much insights we can get from the first round of testing. We were able to make massive changes to the first design. And then after the second round, you could see a huge difference between the initial and the subsequent iteration.
According to Chee, the final design turned out to be very different from what they’ve tested at the beginning:
The design that we have already launched, is completely different from what we initially tested, because of the rich user feedback.
The final design of the eSmart Schools Portal is already live, and it's used by school educators across the Victorian state.
The new portal is easier to navigate, featuring a fresh new look and clearer focus areas and goals that resonate with schools and their needs. Schools now can do as much or as little as their capacity allows, whilst striving to support the development of children and young people who can navigate the online world safely, respectfully, and responsibly. – Alannah and Madeline Foundation
👉 Why UXtweak?
We needed a tool that can quickly deploy and set up, and I think UXtweak is fantastic in that. I don't have to learn all sorts of functionalities because it’s so intuitive, I can just run my prototype tests quickly. That saves me a lot of time. And the features are great, I don’t need anything more, everything is already there.
