Usability Study · Design For Elderly Adults
Enhancing Bay Ridge Center's Website for Senior Community Engagement
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Bay Ridge Center, dedicated to serving the senior community in southwest Brooklyn, sought to expand its outreach and accessibility through an updated website. With a focus on improving user experience, we conducted comprehensive assessments via moderated remote usability testing. While the existing website conveyed a positive sentiment about the Center, certain elements were found to be less intuitive for senior users. Our redesign strategy centred on optimizing the event calendar and newsletter pages, enhancing usability and clarity. Through these enhancements, we successfully increased the website's overall age-friendliness by approximately 83%. The proposed navigation bar has also been implemented.
👩🏫 Role
⌛ Timeline
UX Researcher
UX Designer
7 Weeks
Oct – Dec 2022
🎨 Deliverable
Design Process
1: Identify client needs, frustrations and expectatiosn
2: Analyze user data and consolidate insights
3: Develop improvement and design prototypes
4: Iterate design, deliver and implement
IDENTIFYING PROBLEM
As a growing senior community centre, they want to engage more community members with their in-person and online resources.
Our kickoff meeting with the client Bay Ridge Center gave us the following directions that they would want the design to go:
👵 Users
Trait 1: Senior adults in Bay Ridge and greater southwest Brooklyn
Bay Ridge Center is expanding its outreach from Bay Ridge to other Brooklyn areas.
Trait 2: Senior adults from all socioeconomic backgrounds
Bay Ridge Center supports American, African, Mexican and Chinese and welcomes people from all other backgrounds.
🗻 Challenges
Challenge 1
Currently, the website has a low traffic. It is not fully leveraged to notify community members about the centre and its services.
Challenge 2
Only a fixed and small amount of senior community members participate actively in their events (known as programs internally).
These challenges led to two dimensions of expectations that Bay Ridge Center would like to see in the website.
🎯 Success Metrics
An increase in the website traffic
An increase in the event participation rate
SEEKING FOR DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES
Elderly community members want more clarity on the center and programs information on the website.
We studied the website of Bay Ridge Center to learn about what hinders older users from visiting and accessing centre information.
🔎 Research Method: Moderated Remote Usability Testing
Rationale 1
Safe for elderly people:
Moderated remote usability test can minimize safety issues regarding health, travel etc.
Rationale 2
Flexible and efficient data collection:
Considering the holiday time, participants can schedule tests at their convenience.
Concern - Technology proficiency: The screening survey could not fully determine the tech ability of the participant.
Solution: Preparing accessible tools and more detailed test scripts including instructions for thorough guidance during the testing session.
🚆 Research Process
One Key Focus: How to find a program in the new Bay Ridge Center location to attend on the Program Calendar page
Four key tasks were decided to examine the information structure and clarity on the current website.
The client had a particular focus on the community programs that Bay Ridge Center offered for seniors to engage in. The current program calendar on the website was not as impactful as they thought to drive senior users to participate in the programs, especially events in their new building.
💬 Test Running
6 remote sessions with target users who are above 60 years old were conducted over Zoom.
👵👴 About Participants
Demographics - Gender:
4 males & 2 females
Demographics - Age:
Avg. 68 years old
Community Engagement:
Moderate to high
👀 Research Insights
👍 Information Amount
“It contains marvellous resources for the community.” - Participant A, Age 67
All participants commented that the website was visually appealing and information-rich for elderly users.
👎 Information Delivery
“It was cumbersome to find the information and take action.” - Participant B, Age 71
5 out of 6 pointed out that the information display was not intuitive.
❗ Key Problem: Information on the current website is not easily accessible for older users
🌟 Potential Directions
To address this problem, we prioritized the following two design directions:
Structural and hierarchical content delivery
Accessibility assistive tools on the website
Developing Design
Balancing information browsing obstacles and development limits to reach the best clarity.
Based on our study, our design focused on several aspects to reach the goals identified above. Parts that I am mainly responsible for are information architecture and the program calendar page.
Proposed improvement: Prioritize event-related information in the navigation bar and add accessibility tools throughout the site in an intuitive location.
1️⃣ Information Architecture
📄 Existing Design
The existing information architecture does not show a hierarchical logic. Many content (particularly programs) are hidden among regular content. This structure can take users more time to look for certain information, especially Bay Ridge Center’s promoted content like program calendar and opening time.
🎨 Improved Design
Content hierarchy is re-organised according to the client’s current work focus, which is their New Location and Nutrition program. Accessibility tools like translation, font size and colour contrast adaptor are also incorporated into the navigation bar.
2️⃣ Program Calendar
Proposed improvement 1: Re-organise the program information structure to incorporate event details into the calendar preview.
📄 Existing Design
Not all information about the programs is included in the current calendar. Users have to click on the calendar multiple times to get detailed information. They also have to read the instructions above to decode the calendar themselves.
🎨 Improved Design
Bay Ridge Center has a limited capability to thoroughly re-design the calendar layout because the calendar is an embedded Google Calendar. Considering this limit, we decided to minimise the visual revisions. Instead, we adjusted the basic layout and organised the content to make the calendar more readable when browsing.
Proposed improvement 2: Redesign the whole page from the accessibility perspective.
🎨 Improved Design
Given the fact of limited technical redesign ability, we still propose a more accessible interface of the program calendar page for potential future implementation. Content is organised and re-arranged through the visual hierarchy in the list view. Accessibility tools are also incorporated on this page.
Iterating and Delivering
The proposed design reached an 83% increase in age-friendly level and the navigation bar got implemented.
1️⃣ Iteration
We conducted user testing with the six participants from the previous usability study.
stated the prototypes were more age friendly than it was before in terms of the information display pattern.
✅ 5 out of 6
reflected that the new calendar was easy to browse and get most important information.
✅ 6 out of 6
2️⃣ Client feedback
“We’d love to continue being engaged, you know, with you on our program services and particularly when the new building as the new building opens too.”
- Marty Siederer, Encore Fellow of the Bay Ridge Center
We received highly positive feedback from the client in the final delivery meeting. The navigation bar and improved information architecture were implemented.
Current navigation bar on https://www.bayridgecenter.org/ (after implementation)
Next Steps
Designing for Older Users: Address biases and device compatibility
The technology level of older users should not be presumed as low before any tests. Individual assessment and accommodation should be applied.
Reduce tech biases with older users
Even though the project was conducted on the desktop version, senior users access online information through tablets most often, followed by mobile devices. How to accommodate the calendar into smaller screens is an important concern to be solved.
Older users prefers mobile and tablets