Craziest thing you’ve learned through usability testing
Written April 24th, 2007 by Neal LinkonWe’re in the midst of our every-other-year usability testing and it reminded me just how much we learn when we do these. Some of them are tough to figure out, others are extraordinarily simple. My favorite was the last go-round when we discovered patients didn’t really know what we meant by the term “specialty” in the Find a Doc section. We changed that to “kind of doctor you need” and suddenly nobody had any problems.
What’s the craziest or funniest thing you’ve learned through this kind of testing?
April 24th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I don’t know how crazy it is, but I still see a lot of people continue to use the Back button of their browser software… even when I provide them clear, prominent and adequate cookie crumbs.
Oh, and there’s plenty of people who double-click links and buttons. It cracks me up.
Oh, one more thing… to Neal’s point… we renamed our ‘Orthopedics’ button to ‘Bones, Brains & Backs.’ I love it. The best part is our orthopedics department came up with the name!
April 25th, 2007 at 10:22 am
@swanie:
What do you mean, people still use their back buttons of their browser? That’s what they should be using. It’s what they’re meant for.
What kind of sites are you testing that you don’t want people to use their back button? I use it hundreds if not thousands of times a day (granted it’s bound to the back button on my mouse, so it’s barely a millimeter away, but still..).
Cookie crumbs are helpful for navigation for those that know what they’re for and how to use them, but never take away the basics, especially if you’re building a standards compliant and accessible website.
I do like the idea of renaming both the specialty field and orthopedics. Great idea – it makes so much sense from a consumer standpoint, but nobody in house would ever suggest it!
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:40 am
I like the direction this thread is taking. On our old site, clinical units were separated into medical and surgical specialties–buckets guaranteed to confuse consumers. We’ve simplified that to “Specialties and Services,” which includes all clinical units. Interesting to hear, though, that your users were confused by the word “specialty.”
I’d be curious to know how you discovered that–did you sit folks in front of the site and watch them struggle to find a particular specialty? Or did you give them a list of terms and ask what made sense?
May 9th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Yes, that’s exactly what we did. One of the usability tasks was to find a particular kind of doctor. The first three participants all went straight to the “find a doctor” section of the site, which was a good thing. But they struggled for quite some time before finally trying the drop-down under “specialties.”
So we changed it to “Kind of doctor you need.” The next three participants all went straight to “find a doctor” and then all went straight to “Kind of doctor you need.” They easily completed the task.
Another example is that we used to get a lot of complaints from patients that they couldn’t find the kind of doctor they needed because they were looking for things like what Swanie mentioned above. So we changed the list of specialties to English, and now the only complaints we get are from doctors!
May 10th, 2007 at 8:57 am
The usability study is a great idea. What’s the point of having your information online if people can’t get to the information their looking for. Did you do the study in-house or use an outside agency?
Since we redesigned our web site I’ve been busy getting sections updated, but one of the things I’m also concerned about is making the web site goal oriented. People usually visit web sites for a purpose, so I’m looking into what we can do to make sure we are helping them solve their problem or accomplish their goal efficiently.
May 10th, 2007 at 9:10 am
We too, found a problem with “Clinical Services” as a term for departments. We changed it to “Healthcare Services.” Our people also had a problem with the word “facilities.” We changed it to “Hospitals & Clinics.”
We cross-reference our physician list between English (Brain & Nervous System) and doctor-ese (Neurology/Neurosurgery) in our directory. We also added a “diseases treated” searchable feature in the directory. You can search by “breast cancer” and all of the doctors who treat breast cancer (and provided that information) will pull up, that includes Hem/Onc, Rad/Onc & Surgeons. So many of our clinics are multidisciplinary now that the old department model just doesn’t work from a patient’s point of view.
May 16th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
We just wrapped up our latest round of usability studies, and we did them ourselves. No budget required that way (other than a $50 honorarium we offer to compensate patients for their time). And we learned a ton. One example is that many patients don’t know that the word “philanthropy” means. We also realized that certain design elements on the site, which we expected to be navigational aids, aren’t used at all. So we have some work to do!