Internship Project — Think Design
Hello! This is a Case Study of the project I worked upon during my 2020 Summer Internship at Think Design Collaborative, under the guidance of my mentor, Mr Nandeesha M.
Introduction
In the summer of 2020, I got the opportunity of working as a Design Research Intern at Think Design Collaborative for the month of May & June.
The Internship majorly consisted of 2 parts :
- Theory of Design Research — The first month comprised of Studying various Research Methods in depth and submitting Weekly Assignments based on the knowledge I gained.
- Practicum — The second month comprised of working on a Project under our mentor and applying the knowledge we gained during the first month.
My Role
Talking about the project, my role was to complete a Research Project on Accessibility, Heuristics & WCAG.
The task was to study Accessibility, Heuristics & WCAG to Audit any website on the bases of the studied principles.
Project Plan
I started by planning out the and setting deadlines for the research,
Secondary Research
I started with conducting a Secondary Research through online resources and data available on the internet.
Quantitative Research
Sampling
I decided to use Quota Sampling in which the population is divided into subgroups based on certain parameters and samples are selected from each subgroup.
Note : There may be other stakeholders like teachers, parents, etc. as well. But their percentage is very low and the Website is majorly built for students, Hence only they are being considered in the sample size.
Primary Research
A Primary research was conducted to better understand the users and what are their views on the DTU Website.
Survey (For DTU Students)
A survey was conducted to understand the main goal of DTU Students while on the website and empathize with the problems they face. The observations from the same are as follows :
The survey clearly revealed that the most important task performed on the website is to check New Notices/Circulars.
Checking results and Branch/Stream related query followed at 46% & 36% respectively.
The navigation was also rated with less ease and stood at an Avg. of 2.8 stars (Max. 5 stars)
The survey also helped to gather some of the interesting instances users had with the website and their opinions about it.
Concurrent Probing (For DTU Students)
Concurrent Probing was used to observe & probe how a DTU student goes through the website while performing a particular task.
Task : Go to the DTU Website. Check the instructions for the Online End-Semester Examination and download the date sheet for the same.
Below are the observations from the probing :
User’s identity masked for privacy.
Common Observations
- Users did not read more than 5–6 notice heading and jumped to look elsewhere instead.
- The search bar was not noticed by the users. Even if they noticed, it was ignored as it said ‘Enhanced by Google’.
- Users were actually lost in the website after searching for some minutes.
- Users complained about having a lot of data with poor readability.
- The ‘Web Resources’ Tab was hardly noticed by the users.
Concurrent Probing (Non-DTU Students)
Concurrent Probing was used to observe & probe how a Non-DTU student goes through the website while performing a particular task.
Task: Go to the DTU Website. Go through the information regarding the Computer Engineering Department. Then check the application process for the same.
Below are the observations from the probing :
In-depth Interview
An In-depth Interview was conducted to empathize and understand the problems of Visually Impaired student faces while using the DTU Website.
User Statements
Below are some of the statements that participants exclaimed during concurrent probing & In-depth interview. I captured them to better understand their behaviour and what they expect from the website.
“It would be better if there was a seperate section for students”
“A big highlighted search bar would be better to locate and use”
“The website should promote the students work more”
“Links do not provide the desired information”
“I cannot wait for important information to appear slowly”
“If there’s anything Important, it should be constant and highlighted”
Bodystorming
Bodystorming is a way of subjecting a researcher’s own body to physically experience a situation in order to ideate. A combination of role-play and simulation, bodystorming takes place in a physical environment, instilling a feeling of empathy for the users.
Bodystorming was performed to experience what a Visually Impaired student would do while going through the DTU Website.
Task: To search for a particular notice in the DTU Website.
Software Used : JAWS (A screen Reading software)
Observations
- Too Many Options: The website contains a lot of links and buttons to choose from. This is a major issue as the screen reader needs to go to all the unnecessary links one by one to educate the user which increases the time taken to achieve a goal. Moreover, According to Hick’s Law that the more the choices users face, the longer it will take them to make a decision. Which in return increases the task time and also creates an irritation.
- Unreadable Text: The website contains text which cannot be read by a screen-reader and even cannot be copied. This might be because of the coding of the website is not done in a manner to include all the users or it might not be a text. This is a drastic problem as if the screen reader simply skips the text, a visually impaired user might not ever get to know if it was there. This would create miscommunication and the user can miss important information or opportunities.
Website Analysis
The website was divided into 4 parts to better analyse and point out the problems Users faced usually.
The following is an analysis of the website according to the observations made during the Probing and Interviews.
Other Accessibility Issues
Clearly, the colour contrast ratio is very less between the selected and the non-selected bars.
This poses a problem even for a person with normal sight and especially for a colourblind person.
(Software Used : Silktide, A disability simulator)
Heuristic Evaluation
A Heuristic Evaluation was performed on the website. The following sheet shows the heuristics violated at different sections according to Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Principles on Heuristics.
Colour Contrast Evaluation
The following are some samples of the failed colour contrast pairs according to the WCA Guidelines. The required Ratio should be 4.5:1 or above.
Qualitative Output
After all the exhaustive research & analysis, I generated a Qualitative Output to sum up the major issues User face.
Insights
Finally, I generated Insights, to sum up the research and pave a way for a better design in future.
1. Irrelevant Information
The people were observed to go through only a handful of notices on the top (probably the recent ones) and then start finding an alternative source in the website for the information.
This might be due to the increased cognitive load and impatience to read all the heading. Users need to have a faster way to filter out the necessary information or have pre-filtered information form the cluster.
2. Shortcuts
People were observed to directly searching on google for a specific topic related to the university.
It shows that the people have made a preconceived notion that it's easier to find a topic related to the university on google as it will directly take them to the required webpage.
3. Misleading Links
The website contains links with similar meaning text and links which do not provide the necessary information and mislead the user.
This in return increases the time taken and irritation of the user. The user even developed trust issues about the website if its the original one or not.
4. Inconsideration
The website has not been developed with considering people with visual impairments. People with impairments like colour blindness are hence forced to rely on Screen readers or need to take help from others.
Moreover, the content uploaded is not what can be accessed by a visually impaired person.
Summarizing
Generating Insights marked the end of my Internship with Think Design. To summarize the whole project, I created a video explaining what I worked on and my learnings from the same.
Here’s the video, hope you’ll enjoy it :)
Conclusion
The Internship paved a way for me to delve deep into the field of Design Research and the impact it has on the product we design. I learned a bunch of Industry-standard Design Research methods and collaborated with people from various universities and companies.
Also, I’m currently working on designing an accessible solution for the DTU Website and plan to take it forward with the development team to implement the same.
Thank you for reading :D
If you enjoyed the work, you can connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out to me at nipun.cps@gmail.com
Nipun Sharma
UX Design Student at Delhi Technological University
