Role
Researcher, Writer, and Video Editor
Timeline
2 weeks
Tools
Microsoft 365, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro
“I can’t wait to start class! Now where to start…”🎓
Background
Physicians may seek to earn additional credentials throughout their career including a CPE (certified physician executive) to represent their hours of work in business and managerial courses. Physicians access their courses through a proprietary dashboard except they can’t really make sense of what they’re looking at…
So what’s going on?
Problem
Physicians have been told they can access their courses through their dashboard and can even find mentors and local events, but they aren’t able to find them and help request emails are flooding the company’s inbox.
Research goals 🥅
What goals and pain points do users have while interacting with the dashboard?
Once users learn how to perform certain actions, how is their recall when asked the same on a later date?
What is a feasible and low-cost solution to aid users in navigating the dashboard and reducing help requests?
Research
I teamed up with the UX designer on the team to create a few short questions for a contextual inquiry. We were able to virtually test five people who answered questions about the dashboard’s features and how to complete certain tasks, such as:
You’re a new student pursuing your CPE and want to add your med school alma mater and medical specialty to your profile. Navigate to your profile and add this information.
You’re a newer medical professional and you think pursuing a mentor relationship would be beneficial. Find and send a message to surgeon Dr. Henry Alcock.
The AAPL is always putting on new events throughout the country and you’d like to stay up to date on your favorite topics. Your location is already saved. Find an event in March to attend having to do with cybersecurity.
What did interviewees say? 👂
“I can find my class on the page, but none of the other stuff that’s supposed to be there.”
— User #2
“I like the look of the site. I guess there aren’t any local events in my area though? If there are I can’t figure it out.”
— User #3
“I don’t know how to find friends on here, I don’t think that’s an option.”
— User #3
“I don’t think the meetup function is useful or works, I clicked the topics I liked and didn’t see anything.”
— User #1
Users had a difficult time understanding dashboard features
Can users find and add a mentor?
Can users find and add a local event?
Presenting the research and finding a compromise
Throughout the testing process, users were able to easily find where on the screen to start tasks, but often couldn’t understand how to accomplish the tasks. All users struggled with finding local events and most spent 60+ seconds on later tasks before giving up out of frustration.
After presenting the data to the stakeholders, they did not want to make any changes to the dashboard interface.
Despite this roadblock, our team continued discussions in which we advocated for the user while also expressing empathy for the development team and their capabilities. We reached a compromise in which our marketing team would make a short video tutorial that addressed the main issues.
Designing the script and video
There was no official media team at this organization and only one team member was ready to create a script and learn how to create a video using Adobe Premiere Pro in 48 hours: me! I wrote a script that focused on the profile section, adding a mentor, and finding a specific local event. Once the script was complete, hours and hours of YouTube tutorials were a fun challenge to learn Premiere Pro and make a video.
Once I presented the video and script to the team there was an issue that needed to be iterated upon:
Problem: At 1 minute and 30 seconds, the video feels a bit too long.
Solution: Cut down on the intro and outro that discusses the organization’s mission and how to navigate sending a help/support message to cut out 30 seconds.
The video was sent to the original 5 testers and the results were great
Can users find and add a mentor?
Can users add and find a local event?
What did testers say? 👂
“Oh, that’s tricky how you add local events, but now I can do it.”
— Tester #5
“This is nice, I watched the video and I think I did it wrong because I did the test the next day, but it was pretty clear and I remembered everything.”
— Tester #3
“Cute video! I like the music and it’s all very clear how to set up my information.”
— Tester #2
“I still find the overall dashboard a bit confusing, but I like how this made it a lot clearer. I’m glad they’ve implemented this tutorial into the platform.”
— Tester #1
Final video
After testing was completed, the tutorial was integrated into the dashboard platform and users could access it after their first login through the support/help tab. After 1 month, emails asking for help navigating the dashboard dropped from 20+ to just 3.
Takeaways
Even with a small team and a shoestring budget, me and my team were able to create a concise and helpful tutorial with tangible results. If this project were continued, I would want to do the following:
Further train in video editing tools or collaborate with video editing professionals as I feel some simple animations and a professional voice actor would look a feel more polished. It was admittedly a fun challenge to learn a new program and create a final product on a short timeframe.
Continue testing with users to gauge how useful the tutorial is and how different language and visual elements in the tutorial could benefit users.
