Liverpool City Council – Prototype testing with eye tracking

• The brief
• How we responded to the brief
• What we did
• The outcomes
• Timing

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The Brief

Liverpool City Council, in partnership with Liverpool Direct, created a radical, user focused redesign of their site and wished to gain user feedback before launch, in order to make any changes before the site went live. They then wanted to undertake a second round of testing after being ‘live’ for four months, focused on exploring real content and gaining feedback on the navigation, as well as the interactive elements of the site.

How we responded to the brief

We proposed testing with 6 testers for the first round and 3 testers for the second round, representing Liverpool City Council’s target audience (a mix of socio-economic backgrounds and sex living in the Liverpool area).

In order to ensure buy-in to the research outcomes, we recommended that key staff from the client observe users on the site to gain a shared understanding of the issues. By following this with a facilitated discussion, it would allow the observers to identify the key issues and agree actions in a single day.

What we did

We used the latest in eye tracking technology – a Tobii T60. This enabled us to gain an insight into the usability issues by watching the eye movements in ‘real time’.

Following the first round of testing, in a discussion led by WUP, the client discussed the outcomes and agreed improvements to the prototype. These changes were made and the new site was launched. Four months later, a second round of user testing was conducted, and again WUP facilitated a discussion after the testing to agree issues and actions.

The outcomes

Overall, the site was well presented and testers could easily navigate between the pages using a combination of the mega drop downs or the ‘straight to’ links. The homepage clearly identified the top tasks e.g. paying council tax. However, both rounds of testing identified a number of usability issues, such as providing clear calls to action, meaningful labels and ensuring that the navigation hierarchy was displayed in a way that users could understand where they were. These issues were addressed after each round of testing.

The site has proven very successful, with online issue reporting increasing by 400% and early indicators showing a significant reduction in telephone call levels. The success of the site has also been recognised by Gerry McGovern, usability guru: “The new Liverpool City Council website is one of the best examples of a top task focused website…By embracing evidence-based decision making, Liverpool has achieved a level of clarity and simplicity that is rare for a government website.”

“The testing gave our developers, designers and authors a real insight into user behaviour, and we made significant changes as a direct result of testing. WUP come highly recommended.“

Conor Moody – Web Content Strategy Manager, Liverpool Direct Ltd

Timing
Round 1 took place in January 2011 and round 2 in May 2011. Each round of testing took approx. 4 weeks to complete.

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