Our partner Gerry McGovern wrote about ‘the vital importance of the first-click’. He cited a study by Web Usability which found that customers who clicked the correct first step in the task were twice as likely to succeed at the task as those who missed that vital first-click.

Not long after that, we launched a first-click study with the Libraries team at a Canadian university, in honor of World Usability Day.  The study identified 3 first-click problems common to many web sites. In this case study, we’ll share the problems and potential solutions.

First-click tests are fast and easy

First-click tests display an image of a web page and a task. The test-taker clicks on that part of the web page (link, graphic, menu, etc.) that they think will help them complete the task. And that’s it! That’s a first-click test. Participants are given a number of tasks to complete. Most tools for first-click testing provide ‘heat maps’ showing which parts of the web page were clicked for each task tested. For this test, we used Optimal Workshop’s Chalkmark tool. 

• Try a shortened version of a first-click study: First-click Demonstration Test.

We provided the library with custom invitation software which intercepted randomly selected visitors to the home page. If a visitor opted to participate, the testing page waited in the background until the visitor finished their task at the library site.

Over 200 people responded to the invitation and took the test. On average, it took participants about 4 minutes to perform ten tasks. We removed the results of participants who completed only one task to reduce the chance of spurious data.  The participants ended up fairly evenly split across undergraduate, graduate student, faculty or staff visitors.  This allowed us to compare results across groups and to filter out staff and faculty responses for important student-oriented tasks.

Case Study Results:  Some visitor groups have lower success rates than others.   

Finding journal articles is the top task for students and faculty at most university libraries. Previous usability testing conducted by Neo Insight with undergraduates at a Canadian university suggested that students would be more successful at finding articles with a federated search that searches all sources together, finding books, articles, theses etc. 

When the results for the ‘Find an Article’ task were broken down by visitor group, it became clear that undergraduates were more likely to use the federated search field and conversely were less likely to select the incorrect Library catalogue search link. 

Simulated Results: Click maps show more Undergraduates click in the federated search field than Staff and Faculty participants.

First-click tests can identify and solve top task usability problems

Many sites suffer from top task usability problems that could be identified with First-click tests. If you have hints of problems in your analytics but aren’t sure of the cause, First-click tests can be implemented very quickly and easily. Depending on your traffic volumes, enough responses to identify the problem can be collected in a week or less. For lower-volume sites, it may take longer, particularly if you wish to analyze the results by visitor group.

Online options for first-click testing include Chalkmark by Optimal Workshop and Clicktest by Usabilityhub. Contact us at Neo Insight if you need any help with setting up tests or applying the learning from other testing to improve the usability of your site.

For more details on this story, see First-Click Test to find and solve 3 common usability problems

In late 2011, one of our usability testing clients took the top prize in the Excellence in Public Service Delivery category at the GTEC Government Technology Awards. BizPaL® is a front-end “web discovery system” to help business owners and entrepreneurs find and evaluate all required permits and licenses. Descriptions and links to the items are provided by federal, provincial and municipal government partners. When the user selects a link (e.g. as seen below, to an online permit application form), they transition from BizPal to the partner site to complete their task. 

In a subsequent project with another team at AgPal.ca, we conducted iterative design concept and usability tests for a program and service discovery system that works across federal, provincial and agency sources.

For both discovery system projects, we worked with business transformation company Systemscope, and with government employees to form a multi-disciplinary team. Each team worked synergistically to quickly build and test working prototypes using a user-centred design process. Other team members have some great stories to tell about about this terrific process, and about BizPal itself, in links at the end of the case study.

User tasks don’t end with the discovery

As with any usability testing study, the starting point for both projects was identification of the top tasks. Both teams had extensive data to help us determine the top tasks those permits and licenses or services most frequently sought by users.

Once we had had created a representative set of clear and comprehensive tasks, we had to decide:

• Should we stop when they choose a target link and thus have time to test more top discovery tasks?
• Or, should we test the whole task, from start to completion of the task on the discovered site?

We made this decision independently for each round of testing in each project. For one project, there were severe time constraints in the test sessions, and we had many questions about the discovery process itself, so we stopped after the initial discovery. In the other project, by the second round of testing, we decided to measure a few tasks to completion on the discovered site. Some tasks were selected because of hypothesized barriers to task success within the partner’s site.

Usability domino effect: The results of the testing were shared with the government agency responsible for the particular page. As a result of our testing, pages for each program have been created and linked directly to the discovery targets. Partner agencies will be trained to apply the following design principle.

Welcome pages slow task progress

Hitting a welcome or broad category introduction page slowed usability participants down during our tests. The link to continue the task was often the only link on the page and yet the page content and layout seemed to imply “you’ll want to read all this information about us before you continue”. Needless to say, usability participants usually huffed, read none of it, and clicked the link immediately.

Usability Domino Effect: Video clips of usability participants skipping past the unnecessary steps have encouraged BizPaL and AgPal partners to remove self-promoting text and orient links and pages to user tasks.

Talk to us about how to implement and manage end-to-end task success, on your sites or on discovery systems. 

For a more detailed look at this story, see Discovery systems create a usability domino effect

Why Neo Insight

When you need usable, effective, efficient and satisfying products or services – that's when we'd like to hear from you. That's our core competency, and it has underlies our broad range of strategic evaluation and design services for private, public and non-profit sectors. Our specialization is the user experience – specifically applying user- and usage-centred techniques for requirements analysis, design, and evaluation.  

About Neo Insight

Neo Insight Inc. has been doing business since July 2001, and incorporated in March 2002. Individually we have more than 20 years of experience in the design and evaluation of user experiences. Our approach to usability testing is based not only on industry-standard principles, but also on our clients' business goals and capabilities, and an in-depth understanding of users, their goals and tasks. This ensures that our recommendations and designs are prioritized to our customers' needs and their ability to implement the solutions cost-effectively.

Our participatory and iterative approach ensures a large degree of knowledge transfer. We encourage all stakeholders to actively participate in our usability testing as observers to obtain maximum value. In addition to applying usability techniques, we teach them regularly, in our own workshops and at conferences and other events. Our workshops focus on providing a “hands-on” experience of usability testing, customized to the specific needs of our customer or audience, and immersing participants in the experience of an actual usability test.

Neo Insight is partnered internationally with Customer Carewords (owned by Gerry McGovern) and provides Customer Carewords techniques and services as the sole supplier in Canada.

Clients

Neo Insight has served clients in the public sector at federal, provincial, regional, and municipal levels. We have served a broad variety of clients in higher education, high technology, non-profit, and professional services. Since much of our work uses remote technologies, we work with clients from a variety of places, and conduct usability testing with our clients' clients from anywhere they have high speed internet. We have worked with clients in a variety of countries, in a variety of languages.

Team

Our resources are specialists in user experience and usability. Our rigorous and cost-effective approach is based on many years of observing actual behaviour. We bring multiple disciplines to bear on our projects, and bring experience with leading-edge tools and techniques, based on serving many different types of clients. Below is some information about our senior people.

Mike Atyeo

Mike has 10 years experience in retail point-of-sale and financial systems, and a further 15 years in telecommunications product and service design and design management. He built the first Interaction Design team in BT, prototyped their first multi-media applications (interactive TV and airline seat-back systems), and directed a corporate usability program. He delivered BT's new brand identity on-screen, produced Corporate 'Look and Feel' Standards, and implemented user-centered design process changes for the Consumer Products division. Since co-founding Neo Insight in 2002, Mike has led many user experience projects for government and high-tech clients.

Mike has an Honours degree in Psychology and an MSc in Computer Science. He has published and presented on Human Factors techniques at international conferences, run workshops as part of the UK Government's 'Usability Now!' initiative, and chaired CapCHI - Ottawa's Computer-Human Interaction professional chapter.

Email address: mike at neoinsight dot com

Scott Smith

Scott Smith is a co-founder of Neo Insight. He brings three decades of experience in discovering the intersection of what users really need vis-a-vis how products and services meet user needs. His experience includes usability, business analysis, qualitative research methods, product management, market analysis, and competitive strategy. Before Neo Insight he was with Nortel in the U.S. and Canada, and in telecommunications marketing.

He has conducted hundreds of workshops, user testing sessions, and discussion groups, managed portfolios of hardware, software, and services, built channels to market, and presented to thousands of customers. He has written market strategies and commercial specifications, innovated competitive intelligence techniques, written strategic plans, managed intellectual property, managed user-centred design, established trend-monitoring forums, and managed portfolios of hardware and software.

He has two patents and four pending, in the areas of video consultation (US 5,990,932), multi-service touch-screen zone-based user interface (US 6,313,853), collaborative network planning, and personalization. His design research has been published in Nortel's corporate magazine. His undergraduate B.A. honours degree is in Business, Economics, and Philosophy. His M.B.A. degree program included Operations Management, Advertising, and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Graduate School of Management.

Email address: scott at neoinsight dot com

Eric Hutt

Eric Hutt is a usability research associate who has been with Neo Insight since September 2016 and has been engaged in usability testing and data analysis. His skillset includes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with a specific interest in face-to-face interviewing techniques. Eric holds a Master’s degree in Psychology and specializes in qualitative data collection and analysis. He is a published researcher and experienced presenter.

Email address: eric dot hutt at neoinsight dot com

Roy Ballantine

Roy Ballantine has been a leader in User Experience Architecture, Design, Evaluation & Testing for more than 25 years, at Nortel; Cognos; and IBM, designing products such as web applications, office telephone solutions, and complex Statutory Financial Reporting tools.   He has taught several university courses and given individual lectures and symposia on aspects of User Interface Design and Evaluation.   Roy holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, specializing in Visual Information Processing.  He joined the Neo Insight team in September of 2013 to focus on effective and efficient methods of design evaluation and feedback.

Roy’s skills include finding usable and implementable solutions to complex UX problems in an Agile development environment; concept creation and envisioning; product and feature architecture and design; prototyping (static and functional prototypes) ; web app and desktop tool design; user needs analysis; interaction design and user experience evaluation. Roy holds two patents in design, with a third pending.

Email address: roy at neoinsight dot com

Gord Hopkins 

Gordon Hopkins has been designing user experiences for over 20 years. His extensive user-centered design expertise has generated innovative designs for advanced business and residential telephones, wireless and cellular phones, remote collaboration services, telemedicine equipment, call centers, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, broadband web applications and web portals. Industry sector experience spans telecom, medicine, education, enterprise, and retail. His skills include task analysis, interaction design, heuristic analysis, rapid prototyping/simulation, usability testing, and design management.

Gord holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and has held positions in User Experience Architecture and Design Management at Nortel Networks and Communications Research Center. He established a "Center of Excellence" in interaction design at Nortel Networks, creating an ISO 9000 certified process.

Email address: gord at neoinsight dot com