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Project background

 

How it started:

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• What user problem are we looking to solve?

  • This is the second round of testing as a response to findings in the first round that suggested that our photographic image choice could have been abrasive for varying reasons. 

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• Stakeholders:

  • Marketing​, Web Devs, UX Designers

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• Research goal:

  • Primary goal:

    • I needed to identify specifically what (if any at all) was abrasive about the photographic image chosen.

  • Secondary goal:

    • Show the preference of users between 2 other options outside of the photographic image.

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My Role

 

• UX Lead

 

Method

 

• What are the methods I chose?

  • Survey​

  • Ranking

  • Emotional Continuums

  • Qual / Quant

  • Artifact

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• Why did I choose these methods instead of the others?

  • The survey method that encompassed ranking, scales, open-ended responses, and emotional continuum helped measure which of the 3 options was the preferred and pointed a deep enough understanding as to why.

  • The webcam requirement yielded an accidental artifact study. Studying the objects and environments in the background of the testers gave insight into the personality types that were giving preferences. The correlations that emerged from personality types and prefences became a trend.

 

Challenges and Limitations

 

• What challenges did I face during this research project?​

  • I've never done an artifact study before, so learning how to use non-biased views to come to conclusions was particularly difficult to do while the user was talking about something. Things like their tone of voice, inflection, wardrobe choices, could have all infiltrated my conclusions of the artifact study.

  • The geometric pattern may not have the "the best" pattern to choose as a contender to the photographic image.

  • The blank background option needed to be in the study as a 'control'

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• What were the limitations on budget and timeline?

  • Budget for 40 participants

  • 1 week to complete the study

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Crucial Findings

 

• I concluded that the photograph was not abrasive.

• The majority of all 40 participants voted for photographic background

• Males preferred the photographic image more than females.

• Females showed an even split between geometric pattern vs. photographic

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Insights

• When we look at some demographic info about the participants who preferred photographic image vs. geometric pattern, more trends emerge that align with the audience preferences the designer had been working from for over 2 years.

• Artifact study showed that those who preferred the geometric pattern on the web page also preferred to live their lives in patterns. Their collections of items were incredibly curated versus those who preferred the photographic image had collections of items that organically stacked up over time.

• Attitudes from the audience that preferred the geometric pattern came off as "precise, judge-ey, sarcastic" versus those from the photographic image group were more nurturing, creative, and instinctual.

• The focus on the comments made from those who chose the geometric pattern was more on the tasks at hand on the page, whereas the focus from the photographic image group was on whom the webpage was asking about.

 

Implementation:

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• What was achieved?

  • The marketing team was assured that the background image choice (photograph) was not going to hurt web KPIs.

  • The web dev team needed to know that they could proceed with the photograph being used in the design.

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Stakeholder Impact

 

• How did I collaborate with stakeholders?

  • ​I was sure to confer with the graphic designer for the pattern to test the girl against, as well as the blank version as the control. Since I'm not a designer by trade - relying on the skillsets of others has proved to be vital in the success of my own role.

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• What KPIs were impacted?

  • Quote Starts, Quote Completes

 

Follow-up from this project:

• The UX team was queued for a future A/B test in production post-launch.

 

My learnings

 

• If I did this again, how would I do this differently?

  • I learned to add in more demographics that pivot around the persona structure so that while the focus of the test may be a UX problem being resolved, I could also apply the insights to our persona attributes archives and keep an ongoing deeper understanding of our target audiences.​