A client approached us with questions about pain points and expectations when navigating through account management flows on their platform and usability issues within key tasks associated with those flows. Together we asked, “How can we uncover usability issues in key tasks and learn more about what users expect for the account management information architecture?”
Our client came to us with a list of the key tasks her stakeholders wanted to focus on, and wanted to know if we could uncover more foundational insights in the process of conducting usability analysis. My team proposed conducting task-based qualitative benchmarking across desktop and mobile app experiences to hone in on the critical failure points in the task flows while collecting qualitative insights on users’ overall impressions of similar flows on the platform.
With my team, we conducted a mixed-methods benchmark to investigate the user flows related to account management. To evaluate key metrics, we utilized quantitative sample sizes to provide statistically significant insight into:
- task success and failure rates
- time on task
- self-reported metrics about their sentiments towards completing the task
To understand why participants struggled or had negative feelings about tasks, we leveraged qualitative interview strategies to dig into what elements of the menu organization and visual design of the platform made it easy or difficult to complete the task.
Utilizing this task-based qualitative benchmarking approach, my team uncovered usability issues such as inconsistent menu iconography, unusual information architecture, and low discoverability of features. Through this understanding of the why behind the struggles of completing each task, we discovered opportunities for our client to apply task-specific learnings to other aspects of the platform’s information architecture and design best practices.
If I were to conduct this research again, I would break out key user journeys and their tasks into separate studies to dig and learn more deeply about the pain points and uncover more details from participants about their expectations and preference for visual presentation and information organization.