Code Championship
Overview
Code Championship is an organization that offers competitive coding tournaments for children in grades 3-9. Code Championship came to my team with an interest in how they can improve the product experience for their users. While the website currently does its job of registering, not much is known about how well it’s communicating. Code Championship also has an option for teachers to create and host their own tournaments, however, this feature is under-utilized. While working on a team of four other UX designers, we researched and were able to identify opportunity spaces for the website.
Over the course of one week, my team and I conducted individual usability reviews, then collectively, we conducted a total of 25 usability tests, and finally, I solely created a report with our findings and recommendations for our client.
Role: UX Designer
Team: Kong Vang, Jessica Huynh, Crissy Tolson & Luke Rivard
Tools: Google Docs, Sketch, Google Sheets, InVision, Trello
Methods: Usability Review, Usability Evaluations, Affinity Diagraming
Design Cycle
Usability Test Planning
My team and I started our project with a usability test planning session. We worked as a group to review the user and site goals for the application in order to gain an understanding of the goals and questions we’re trying to address.
Usability Review
After our planning session, my team and I individually conducted usability reviews. I used Ben Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design for my review. The usability review allowed me to familiarize myself with the website. It also allowed me to identify pain points and possible areas of focus for the usability tests.
After the usability reviews, my team and I came together to discuss our findings. We shared our reviews with each other on an InVision whiteboard and started affinity diagraming patterns and themes. Some patterns we came across were unclear wayfinding and feedback in regards to the navigation, the lack of hierarchy and visibility on the homepage, and an unclear flow of how to register for a tournament.
Usability Testing Script
A protocol was prepared by my team and myself for the usability tests.
We identified the following goals to test:
Gain insight into a user’s mental model on how they would engage in coding.
Gain insight into how well Code Championship’s core values are being communicated.
Evaluate usability and findability issues with hosting a tournament and understand users' pain points in navigating the tournament instructions page.
Gain insight into how well the visibility and hierarchy on the home page communicate what to expect at a Code Championship Event.
Evaluate visibility pain points in regards to wayfinding through the site as a whole.
Usability Evaluations
Participants were recruited either through the company or individually sourced by designers.
All sessions:
Varied from 30 min -1 hour
Were conducted via Zoom calls
Participants were given a link to the website where they screen shared
Synthesis
After the final usability test, my team and I created a Trello board where we documented all our raw data. We color coded our data according to our research goals. This allowed us to sort by research goals. It also allowed us to search by keywords and helped us with synthesizing our data.
Key Findings
Areas of Excellence
Videos
Clear prices
Easy process to join the mailing list
Reports from children who expressed interest in coding after seeing the website
Opportunities for Improvement
Restructure navigation bar to improve navigation of the site as a whole
Revise home page to include most relevant information
Delivery of Code Championship’s values to users
Break down tournament section for parents and teachers
Findings & Recommendations Report
Key slides from my final report:
Finding #1
Finding #2
Recommendation #1
Recommendation #2
Next Steps
Brainstorm new labels for navigation
Explore other platforms for connecting with users
Implement changes gradually to the website then perform more usability tests
Summary
This is my first project working with other UX practitioners! I really enjoyed being able to work with others on a project. One thing I realized is that although there are more minds to tackle the tasks at hand, because there are more minds, there are more ideas to tackle a problem, and deciding which step to take is crucial in a team. One of the biggest challenges I had with this project was synthesizing the data we gathered. We chose to input our data in a Trello board and color-coded our notes. I am more of a visual learner, so the inability to affinity diagram was a challenge. Trello’s functionality to sort by color helped offset that challenge however, in the future, I would rather choose to utilize another platform to synthesize data.
Be curious.
Keep dreaming.