WCMA

USABILITY TESTING

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) partnered with Pratt Institute to optimize its website for improved content discovery by Williams College students. To gather valuable insights, the Pratt team conducted remote, moderated usability tests over Zoom, assessing the overall user experience of the museum's target audience when navigating and utilizing specific resources on the current site. By engaging eight students from both institutions, the Pratt team aimed to identify key areas for improvement, focusing on enhancing the website's usability, resource organization, and accessibility for future development.

  • This was a research and design based project focused on site usability conducted at Pratt Institute.

  • William’s College Museum of Art

  • The team was comprised of 4 User Researchers, all current graduate students at Pratt Institute.

  • UX Researcher & UI Designer

    1. Recruiting test users

    2. Moderated remote user interviews

    3. Analyzing interviews and findings

    4. Designing and prototyping improvisations and recommendations

GOAL

The primary goal of this user research study was to uncover pain points in the user journeys of Williams College students as they navigated the WCMA and to improve content discoverability and exploration.

CURRENT SITE

PROJECT JOURNEY

user group

For this study, eight participants were recruited, including seven undergraduate and graduate students from Williams College and one from Pratt Institute.

The participants engaged in moderated user interviews conducted by one interviewer and one moderator from the research team. The sessions involved tasks performed on the WCMA website, with four users testing on mobile devices and four on desktop. The study began with participants answering questions about their expectations for the museum website, including the resources they anticipated it would provide. They then completed nine structured tasks designed to evaluate their ability to locate key information and utilize resources offered on the WCMA site.

The tests were conducted over Zoom, where participants shared their screens and audio as they navigated through the tasks. After completing the tasks, participants were invited to share their final comments, questions, and suggestions regarding the website. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, with each researcher in the team individually reviewing the materials. This methodology revealed how Williams College students interact with the WCMA website, uncovering areas for improvement and guiding the Pratt team in optimizing navigation, content exploration, and search functionality.

FINDINGS & recommendations

The research team reviewed and consolidated user interview data, including transcripts, video, and audio, into an affinity map to identify key insights and areas for improvement that could be addressed through design adjustments and information re-organization. There were five predominant usability issues that were observed through the study that are outlined and broken down below along with corresponding recommendations to each of them with designed prototypes.

sECONDARY RECOMMENDATIONS

CONCLUSION

Williams College is a small teaching college located in Massachusetts with an upcoming expansion on the horizon for its on-campus art museum. The institution hoped to get a better understanding of whether its museum website was truly beneficial; through collaboration with Williams College Museum of Art, a team at Pratt Institute led a usability test with a group of seven Williams College students and one Pratt student. Conducted remotely, the undergraduate and graduate school participants were moderated using the WCMA site to find specific items and through open-ended instruction. The primary goal of the test was to learn how users currently utilize the site and how WCMA can potentially streamline its content discoverability and exploration paths in the future. To fully understand the user experience of site visitors, the cohort was divided evenly to review the website in both desktop and mobile versions, thereby identifying its range of capabilities. 

The test revealed several usability challenges that, if addressed, will greatly enhance site experience for users. Despite its eye-catching visual format, issues remain when attempting to locate specific information about WCMA and its wealth of on-site resources. To provide solutions, this report from Pratt presents design and contextual recommendations primarily focused around the following areas of opportunity:

Implementing these suggestions will help to create a more ideal experience when using WCMA’s website, making museum programming and resources more impactful overall. Improving navigation and reorganizing the content architecture of the site will not only better promote existing programming and events but address the museum’s ultimate goal of enhancing content discoverability. As a result, Williams College students and the greater community will feel encouraged to engage further and spread the museum’s mission.