NorthStar Digital Literacy

Digital Literacy Website Redesign

Overview

The intent of this project is to revamp the most commonly used features of this application to be as efficient and easy as possible for repetitive use by portal admins. By using contextual inquiry, there were five items that can be improved on to attain this goal. One of those features is bulk adding/inviting learners into the portal. There were two main issues with this feature that could be improved on to promote efficiency.

Contextual Inquiries with 3 users revealed 2 key findings:

The instructions to bulk add students are unclear for new admins and volunteers who lack the knowledge to create a CSV table.
Assigning tags was not straightforward when bulk adding students and optimized to avoid having admins assign tags one by one.

Client

Contextual Inquiry
Cognitive Walkthrough
Synthesis
Sketching
User Flow
Prototyping

Deliverables

Prototype

User Group

Portal Admins

Northstar Digital Literacy was developed in response to the needs of job seekers who may lack the digital literacy skills by offering free digital literacy assessments.

Methods

Research

To determine what is “good” on the website and what needs further improvement, my team and I conducted a heuristic evaluation on key tasks undertaken by a portal admin (fig. 1).

I was assigned the task of “bulk-adding new students”.

Here is how it went:

During the cognitive walkthrough, I noticed that the instructions for bulk adding students were unclear, primarily in how to create the CSV template.

The task begins by clicking on 'Import,' which results in a dropdown window (fig. 2).

The instructions “you can submit their information by filling out our CSV template” gave me the impression that it will be fillable. “CSV template” was bolded and interactive, allowing me to understand that I can click on it. It took me by surprise when it only showed me “first_name, last_name, email”, making it non-fillable.

It failed to meet the visibility, mapping, feedback and interaction model criteria for optimization and usability.

Good Error prevention: shows first and last name along with email and the option to fix any misspellings.

Unclear function of checkboxes

fig. 3

fig. 1

Figure 3 shows what a successful import CSV file looks like.

fig. 2

Difficult to determine link is interactive
Unclear instructions

Findings & Recommendation

Leverage the existing feedback function

User One, a frequent admin of Northstar, mentioned that volunteers struggle with understanding and using the import feature to add students in bulk due to limited knowledge of CSV files.

User Two, a new admin, faced difficulties finding formatting instructions for her file and got stuck on adding tags. She suggested that a template allowing direct tag assignment would expedite the task.

Observing these users revealed that the pain points to this task was the unclear instructions and a lack of intuitive guidance for filling out the table. To address this, I proposed leveraging the existing feedback function instead of lengthy instructional paragraphs.

This section has clear and concise instructions which include the location of the template and where to find the template needed to upload students in bulk.
The template link was hard to find for some users. By having the template clear and visible and part of the instructions it will be easier to find and access.
Many times, if there is no desktop app running, the template will not open successfully. By having this option, it will allow the user to see and know which app they can run it on. If there is no desktop application available, google docs is always available.
Adding this column will make adding and creating new tags easier and straight forward.

Outcome