Minnesota Women’s Press

Client: Minnesota Women’s Press

Roles: UX Research, UX Design, Usability Testing Moderator and Observer

Methods: Heuristic Analysis, Usability Testing, Think-Aloud Protocol, Affinity Diagramming, Lo-Fi Wireframing

Tools: Figma, FigJam, Otter.ai, GoogleSheets, Keynote

Team: Michael Roth, Miriam-Rachel Oxenhandler-Newman, Teeko Yang, Kate Arneson, Barbara Guttman

The Brief:

Help a feminist print and digital platform improve the usability of its mobile site

What I Did:

I worked on the research and design of the mobile site including leading and participating in user interviews, heuristic analysis, and wireframing.

Introduction

Minnesota Women’s Press (MWP) is a community based magazine that has been around since 1985. They provide journalism and first-person narratives, reporting, and conversations that center the leadership of everyday women (cis and trans) and nonbinary people who are regenerating Minnesota’s ecosystems, creating human-oriented economies, transforming justice, and healing trauma. MWP sees their website as its hub for awareness of the varied content formats and subject matters and for visitors to engage and take action, via, for instance, the Changemaker’s Alliance. It is also a place to generate revenue with advertisements, donations, and subscriptions. 

However, MWP’s website lacks clarity for its users and does not allow for easy navigation for those who are interested in their articles and in supporting their organization. 

The Process

  1. Heuristic Analysis

  2. Compose Usability Test Script

  3. Conduct Usability Tests

  4. Create Wireframes

  5. Compose Finding and Recommendations Report

This process allowed for me to experience the site firsthand based on the client’s concerns and to guide users to those areas of concern. My redesigns were made to allow my client to change their site based on direct user feedback.

The Research

How do current users experience Minnesota Women’s Press?

How can the current website be modified to meet the organization’s goals?

Research Goals

Minnesota Women’s Press identified primary tasks for users on their site and goals for the research team.

The team eventually boiled down these tasks and goals to four main areas of concern: navigation, awareness of the Changemakers Alliance (CALL), donations, and subscriptions. MWP’s website analytics showed that half of their users were using mobile devices and Minnesota Women’s Press voiced concern about optimizing their site for their growing number of mobile users. As a result, the team chose to focus on revising the mobile site.

Heuristic Analysis

I performed a heuristic analysis as a usability review for the mobile website to find out what elements are working. Through this analysis, my biggest concerns were: being able to find similar and related articles once I found an article to read, being able to locate and learn more about CALL, being able to understand how to donate to MWP, and how to subscribe to their magazine. 

With this general understanding of MWP’s mobile website, I, along with my team of UX researchers and designers, planned and developed a usability test for 10 users to help gain an understanding of how other users might engage with MWP’s mobile website. We then gave tests to several users to gauge whether or not the website functioned as it had for us. 

The users were interviewed using the think-aloud protocol while they were asked to perform several tasks identified by MWP. 

Users were asked to: 

  • Give an initial impression of MWPs website

  • Find an article to read on a certain subject, and then find a related or similar article

  • Find a way to connect with other like-minded people through the Changemakers Alliance and understand what it does

  • Donate to MWP

  • Subscribe to MWP

Findings

Users had difficulty finding related articles once they finished reading an article

“I’d like to click on the author’s name, [thinking that} they have their beat and write about women and politics. But then I just see the same [article] again.”

Users did not understand what the Changemakers Alliance is.

"I got a little bit of what they do here, but I don't know what becoming a member means.”

Users were overwhelmed by the amount of choices for donating and subscribing. 

“There’s too many [subscription] options.”

The Design Iterations

Navigation

Optimize website for mobile viewing:

  • Simplify number of articles on home page- keeping only articles from the most recent issue or two

  • Make search a more prominent feature

  • Simplify tag system

  • Coding articles by issue- uniting articles by theme for each month

  • Placing advertisements at the top and bottom of the pages to avoid confusion

Changemaker’s Alliance

  • Give CALL its own tab in the navigation bar as well as its own section on the homepage

  • Give CALL a succinct one sentence description on its homepage and describe its connection to MWP

  • Use graphics to break up the text heavy parts of the page to make the further details more easily digestible.

Donations and Subscriptions

  • Place donation options at the top of the page. Use brand iconography for Venmo and PayPal to help users easily identify ways to give money

  • Use graphics to help explain benefits of different levels of support

  • Calendar of CALL events to entice users to donate

  • Use a graphics or a chart to help explain the different subscription options

Next Steps

Mobile-First Design

We identified user issues with the mobile app and strategized that MWP could make changes to the navigation, prominence of the Changemaker’s Alliance, and ease of subscription and donation processes, but for real progress or change, I recommend a "mobile-first" redesign.