Clients

• Who: Time to Change Wales, a campaign to end mental health stigma
• What: Usability testing of the existing site to inform new site development
• How: Observed 1-2-1 depth interviews with key users followed by a facilitated discussion to agree key issues and outcomes
• Result: A new site with a clear IA and a focus on key user goals

Background

Time to Change Wales (TTCW) is a national campaign to end the stigma faced by people with mental health problems. They produce myth-busting resources and collaborate with individual champions and organisations to raise awareness of this stigma. The team also organise specific campaigns to engage wider audiences, such as ‘Time to Talk Day’, which ask everyone in Wales to have a conversation about mental health.

The TTCW team, led by June Jones, Campaign and Strategy Lead, were looking to revamp their website. Adopting a user-first approach was key for this redesign and TTCW wanted to establish through testing:

• What motivates users to use the TTCW website
• What information they are looking for and what journey they take through the site
• How easy or difficult users find the website to navigate and whether they can achieve their goals
• Overall perceptions of the look and design of website

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What we did

An initial kick off meeting between TTCW, our MD, Peter Collins and UX Consultant, Ken Groom, laid out the plan of action: two days of testing, one observed by TTCW and their design agency.

8 testers were recruited, including individuals who suffer from mental health problems and those who work with potential sufferers, such as health care and educational professionals.
One sunny August day, we crossed the bridge to Wales and set up a pop-up usability studio at the TTCW office. The first 4 testing sessions were observed by a mixture of TTCW staff and a representative from the design agency.

As a Welsh site, Ken facilitated 2 of the sessions in Welsh. Our Welsh testers would jump between the different language versions of the site and raised an interesting point about ensuring consistency of content across multi-lingual sites.

Following the testing sessions, all those present took part in a discussion, facilitated by Peter, around the issues witnessed and which were the key ones to address.
4 additional unobserved testing sessions took place later that week to consolidate findings and pick up further user goals and usability issues not covered on the first day of testing.
All issues and recommendations were compiled into a report for June and her team to reference as they began the redesign work.

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Outcome

The testing revealed that the TTCW site was jampacked with great content that users wanted, but testers had difficulty using the navigation to find it. We recommended an alternative approach for the site’s information architecture to make content easier to find.

3 months after the research, TTCW launched their completely revamped website. You will now find a clean and simple design that leaves you in no doubt as to what this great campaign is trying to achieve. Take a look at it here.

“Web Usability offered a clear framework for user testing and reporting. Crucially, their report gave us a clear route map working with the agency implementing the navigation and design changes to the website, thus saving time and money. A positive online experience is essential for user engagement, and Web Usability’s expertise in UX gave us a jump start by providing us with vital insight to help re-position our website to offer a first class user experience.”

June Jones, Content and Strategy Lead