Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Overview

Cooper Hewitt partnered with Pratt Institute to enhance user experience on its mobile site, aiming to make content more engaging. Using Tobii eye-tracking, we identified improvements for footer navigation, call-to-action (CTA) placements, streamlined information, and a banner for the "Digital Exhibition" page.
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Problem

As the only U.S. museum dedicated to design, Cooper Hewitt wanted to make key pages more appealing to new and returning users. The current website has abundant content, some of which may not be relevant to users, creating a cluttered experience.
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Objectives

Analyze Information Flow

Understand the order in which information is processed by users to ensure a logical and intuitive flow.

Identify Sources of Confusion

Determine which elements in the design cause confusion for users, aiming to improve clarity and usability.

Assess User Attention

Identify which information users tend to ignore, and adjust content placement and prioritization to enhance engagement.

Current Cooper Hewitt Mobile Site

Process

Client Kickoff

Our team met with Cooper Hewitt to understand their goals, uncovering their interest in how users perceive site content.

Participant Recruitment

Through school channels, we selected 8 participants matching our target profile, ensuring proper eye-tracking equipment compatibility.

Testing

After our tests have been scheduled, we conducted the eye-tracking which included a pre-test questionnaire, task completion, a Retrospective Think Aloud, a post-test questionnaire, and a System Usability Scale survey.

Developing Recommendations

Based on the insights gathered during the testing phase, we developed a detailed set of recommendations for the client. These included specific improvements for the site's footer, navigation, CTA placements, and content organization. These recommendations were delivered in a comprehensive report, outlining actionable steps to enhance user experience.

Creating the Test Plan for our Study

Here we chose an approach, developed tasks, defined measurements, decided how tests will be recorded, and outlined the procedure.

Testing Out Our Tasks on the Cooper Hewitt Mobile Site

We conducted the tests with 8 participants during a moderated in-person usability test.

Analyzing Gaze Replays, Heatmaps, and Gaze Plots

During this step of the study, we analyzed videos by looking at gaze replays, heatmaps, and gaze plots to try and find patterns.

Providing Actionable Recommendations for Cooper Hewitt

After analyzing the data, we were able to develop a number of recommendations for Cooper Hewitt. We presented our recommendations in a slide deck format to Cooper Hewitt. Along with the slide deck, we created a problem list which included a list that described each usability problem with a short text and a severity rating. You can see the preview below:

Findings

Here are some things we found while working on this project:

Footer

Important sections were hard to locate due to unclear titles. Proposed changes included renaming sections and removing duplicate items in the footer.

Exhibitions

Users struggled to locate the "Purchase Tickets" button. We recommended moving it to the top of the page to improve visibility.

Tickets

The calendar layout caused cognitive load. We recommended a streamlined design for selecting dates and tickets.

Digital Exhibition

Users got "stuck" on a microsite without clear navigation back. Adding a top banner for orientation was suggested.

Results

So we did all this work. Tell us the results!

Usability Recommendations

We provided Cooper Hewitt with six actionable recommendations to enhance website usability, improving navigation, content clarity, and overall user experience.