THE PROBLEM

UpField Atlanta’s mission is to provide soccer lessons to young children in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia.

As a relatively new operation with programs based in five regional cities, forty schools, and still growing, the usability of their website is a critical component to their operational success. It must clearly communicate necessary information and provide a frustration-free experience for users to efficiently navigate the multiple forms required to sign up for their programs.

Users reported frustrations with sign-up experiences, readability issues, and locating specific program information.

THE GOAL

Participants were asked to perform a series of tasks including identifying a coach, finding a league program in a specific city, and to simulate a clinic sign-up experience.

The purpose of these tasks was to help identify speculative usability issues within these specific areas and to uncover previously unknown issues.

my role

I was responsible for the completion of:

• Sourcing survey participants

• Sourcing usability testing participants

• Conducting the survey

• Facilitating the usability tests

• Analyzing the data

• Making informed usability recommendations

Survey & OBSERVATIONS

Securing participants that exemplified the demographic of UPfield’s known users, or potential users, of the website was a critical first step in the usability study. As the site is exclusively utilized by parents of young children in suburban areas, the participant selection process was rigorous to ensure the correct users were selected.

ISSUE 1: COLOR CONTRAST

All three participants expressed concern on the header text (#00607A text on #479A90 background) and its difficulty to read.

Participant #2 commented that the lack of contrast in the colors made it extremely difficult to read as they struggled with suspected mild color-blindness. Participant #3 stated that the dark blue text “basically melted into the [blue-green] background,” making it difficult to recognize where the navigation categories were to begin the scenario/tasks being asked of them. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that nearly every instance of text on the homepage and interior pages failed ADA color compliance for contrast at all sizes.

ISSUE 2: INCOMPLETE INFORMATION

All participants were able to navigate to the ‘Team UpField’ page relatively quickly (3 seconds on average) to find information on the coaching staff, but only Participant #2 was satisfied with the content provided on the page and considered their task ‘complete.’

Both Participant #1 and #3 felt they could not consider the task complete due to the lack of information provided. Though they found information on the Director of Coaching, they were unsure if this person was a coach themselves, or just held the corporate title. Participant #3 also mentioned being concerned at the lack of images or headshots on the page and expressed a desire to see them.

ISSUE 3: INCORRECT INFORMATION

When asked to locate a League location closest to Johns Creek, GA, Participant #2 was able to complete the task in the shortest amount of time, but noted that they did not take the time to read any content and just ‘scanned until [they] found something that looked like a map.’ They admitted that while this was an effective strategy for answering the ‘ask’ of the task quickly, that they did so because they were overwhelmed by the amount of text and disorganization of the tables/charts on the page.  Participant #3 expressed similar concerns, but navigated the page much slower. It took them nearly 2 minutes to determine where the classes were held and they noted being distracted by the amount of unnecessary content on the page. They also noted that the address and pin locators for the Roswell and Woodstock locations appeared to be incorrect.

ISSUE 4: BROKEN LINKS

When asked to find information on what to bring to ‘League’ practices and games, of the three participants, two were able to complete the task, and one was not.

Interestingly, all three participants took different paths to accomplish (or not accomplish) the presented task. Participant #2 implemented their self-admitted preferred strategy of scrolling until the information was found and was able to locate it fairly quickly (17 seconds). Participant #1 was able to locate the information, but managed to find and click two dead links before also scrolling. They expressed frustration in being presented with a link to find that information on the page only to be met with two dead ends. Participant #3 struggled to find the location of where this information would be housed. They visited the ‘League Programs’ page several times in hopes of finding the necessary information but was unsuccessful. Clicking on ‘Parents Corner’ had not occurred to them and they ultimately stated they would just email the coach or contact the facility for more information.

RECOMMENDATION 1:

Revise Site Color Palette, Specifically Text Colors

Not only did participants of the study struggle with the readability of the text on the site, but nearly every text color and background combination on the website failed at all sizes for ADA color contrast.

Therefore, to not only improve the overall usability of the site, but to also make it ADA compliant, the recommendation of incrementally adjusting the brand colors should be made.

These are the color adjustment suggestions:

RECOMMENDATION 2:

Reorganize ‘Team UpField’ Page

Include local Atlanta-area based coaches on the page with brief descriptions and professional images. This would help build trust in the potential customer base and ease the minds of parents.

RECOMMENDATION 3:

Simplify ‘Leagues’ Page

Greatly simplify and combine the three graphics to include only necessary information. These should also be live text, not embedded graphics as static text images negatively impact responsive screen usage.