Welcome!
UX research case study
How to motivate instructional materials providers (“vendors”) to complete their product listings?
October - December 2021 | Role: UX Researcher
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Summary
This was an exploratory research project I was involved in as a UX Researcher consulting for EdCuration.
The study's objective was to understand how EdCuration’s vendors felt about their product listing experience and identify their pain points when going through the process. The results from this research would inform the design direction.
Background
Our client is EdCuration, an organization that brings together buyers and sellers of instructional materials to get better learning programs into classrooms faster to increase student success.
The Problem
The client’s top challenge was that EdCuration’s instructional materials providers (aka “vendors”) weren’t fully completing their profiles (company profile and product listing).
This resulted in very few leads being produced from potential customers (aka “educators”), which affected vendors’ justification for paying for the platform and ultimately EdCuration’s business model. This was the challenge we sought to solve.
Our target user
Meet "Janet."
Our persona was based on generative research findings and kept the team empathetic and user-focused.
Project Orientation
The project team consisted of the CEO of EdCuration, her developer, and four members of Beginex's UX team (3 designers and 1 researcher). The project lasted ten weeks.
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My role was primarily research-focused.
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Conducted generative research and synthesis
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Contributed to card sorting exercise during ideation
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Led evaluative research and synthesis
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Collaborated with design team throughout the process
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Presented findings with design team to client and developer, and successfully helped the client feel comfortable with the redesign after she initially objected to key changes
KPI's measured the value of our changes.
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User satisfaction rating
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Content appearance
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Ease of use
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Likeliness to recommend
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Successful task completion
1. Research
Our research goals were to:
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Determine how easy it is for vendors to sign up and create a vendor and product listing
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Evaluate pain points vendors experience when signing up with EdCuration, creating their vendor and product listing, and receiving inquiries
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Understand how vendors feel about using EdCuration
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Understand how competitors encourage their users to complete their profiles and to develop ideas for improvements and unique features that benefit vendors
Three research methods were used to address these goals:
Heuristic Evaluation
Research Question:
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What is the process like to signup and create a vendor and product profile?
To inform our understanding
User Interviews & Usability Tests
Research Questions:
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What steps do users take to create a product profile?
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What motivates vendors to complete a robust product profile?
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What are their major pain points?
To inform the user's experience
Comparative Analysis
Research Questions:
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What are the main user flows for vendor sign up?
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What are the main user flows for listing a product?
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How do competitors encourage users to complete their profiles?
To inspire design practices
The heuristic evaluation findings alerted us to narrow our project scope to focus on either the vendor profile creation process or the product listing creation process because there were too many issues to address in our limited time constraint.
Issues included:
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Mapping
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Consistenty
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Flexibility
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Users weren't given a progress bar
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Lack of visibility of system status (e.g., users weren't given indication the form was saved or published)
The team decided to focus on the product listing creation process after consulting with the client.
The heuristic evaluation findings informed the user interview and usability test approach. The team engaged with four users and observed them in action which confirmed much of what the team saw in our heuristic evaluation.
Issues focused around:
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Pigeonholing (need more flexibility within the form)
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Inconsistency between form and preview page (also unexpected verbiage and layout)
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Labels, instructions, and overall language were not intuitive.
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Scope of the term “product” is not clearly defined.
At this point, we needed to define the root cause of the problem so I facilitated a 5 Why's exercise.
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While lack of clarity and instructions were strong themes found from the affinity mapping exercise, we determined that this was a result of vendors not understanding how to complete the form in a way that accurately showcased their product. This was the problem we needed to solve, not our hypothesis that vendors were challenged by the length of the product listing form or needed gamification to complete it.
Now the design team was ready to be inspired! Product listing processes and listing pages for five indirect competitors were compared for our comparative analysis.
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Design direction inspirations included:
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Clear calls to action
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Collapsible side navigation
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Informational modals and helper text popups
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Ways to allow for more flexibility for users
2. Ideation
Our research led to the UX team’s design direction, “How might we design a form that is easy for vendors to navigate, offers clear instructions, uses consistent terminology, and provides flexibility so they can get their products into the hands of more educators?”
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During our ideation phase, the team and I organized content based on required questions followed by optional questions to allow users a chance to publish their form earlier.
After the second usability test, the team and I re-categorized the content based on logical groupings and the hierarchy of information. Users indicated they wanted to complete the form entirely before publishing and felt when the questions were presented logically it helped them proceed through the form easily.
3. Validating
Our research goal was to test whether our design direction improved vendor's ease of use and overall satisfaction when completing their producing listing. Because we were testing an existing prototype, we used user interviews and usability tests to validate our design.
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User Interviews
& Usability Tests
Research Questions:
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​How have we improved the steps users take to create a product listing?
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Have we made it easier for vendors to complete a robust product listing?
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Have we addressed their major pain points?
I recruited vendors from among EdCuration’s current Premium account holding clients and prospective clients using email. Participants were offered a gift card for their participation. Six vendors agreed to participate.
I used a charting method to synthesize the data. Checkmarks were placed next to users who completed the tasks associated with the usability test. At the end, I quantified the data and prioritized the issues based on the number of users who were not able to complete the tasks. Those tasks that had three or more users who could not complete it were prioritized.
Our testing determined our form still had issues with inconsistent terminology, flexibility, clarity with instructions, and some challenges with navigation. The UX team took the prioritized data, iterated further, and made improvements to the final design.
4. Final design
Redesign value. Our team found that the redesign had a positive impact on our users.
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Increase in ease of use
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Increased overall satisfaction with the process
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More users used minimal effort to get through the form
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More users were overall content with the process
Implications. This redesign has the potential for vendors to sell more products because they can quickly complete a full product listing. EdCuration could also increase business from current vendors and new referrals because vendors were satisfied with the process.