aiga.org Usability Test Results

1. Find a featured talk from 2021

After one errant click, our test user was able to find a talk from 2021 using the top navigation tool and the search bar on the Talks page in a small amount of time.

Time: 12 seconds

2. Sign up for the AIGA Newsletter

This task was surprisingly difficult, leading our test user to feel like they failed. However, we should note that it is normal to feel frustration with usability issues, but that the failure is with the design, not the user. Most websites will have a signup link, but it's often hidden in the footer or in a callout somewhere, making it hard to navigate to directly or by using the search function.

In fact, our user did attempt to search for “newsletter” and it returned nothing; but, if they had performed a “find” on the webpage, for the text “newsletter,” they would have located it in the footer.

Time: 220 seconds

3. Find the number of Board Members

This was relatively easy. Our user navigated directly to "About AIGA" then "Board of Directors" in the header. To answer the question they counted the people listed on the page.

Time: 23 seconds

4. Find the closest chapter to where you live.

After becoming briefly misguided into a page on the my.aiga.org website, our test user went back and found the nearest chapter by choosing Membership & Community > About AIGA Chapters from the top navigation bar.

They then had to press the “Find a Chapter” button, which landed them on the my.aiga.org website. They noticed this site has a different navigation tool.

We both noticed that the chapters are listed in alphabetical order by city name and we discussed how this could be problematic for someone who does not live close to one of the more populated cities hosting AIGA chapters.

Time: 39 seconds

5. Submit a poster for the Design for Democracy poster.

This task was tough for a different reason. Because this call for posters by AIGA emphasizes potential positive roles for design within society, one may expect to follow the "Positive Impact" link in the "Inspiration" drop down, which would be accurate. However, when our user clicked the link from the Positive Impact page, the link to "Design for Democracy" was broken. They also tried (unsuccessfully) to use the site search to go directly to the page.

Our user eventually solved the problem by hovering over similar links on the "Positive Impact" page, and noticed how other pages used a specific pattern that reflected the page titles. They typed out the URL to "Design By Democracy” by repeating the pattern in the URL bar.

From the Design for Democracy page, one can easily find the button to “Submit a Poster.”

Time: 177 seconds