SaaS Analytics Dashboard

Web Application/ Web

5 Months // Mar - May 2023

This was a 3 month-long project where I designed and developed an interactive dashboard to demonstrate 200+ student organizations' travel conditions from the University of Texas at Austin. I was the only designer and reported to the stakeholders individually throughout the timeframe. This case study focuses on the assignment reporting portion of the project.

My role:

Tools:

Data Visualization Graduation Assistant

UX Design/Research

Tableau, Excel, SnowFlake

Project Overview

SESN works with a number of e-commerce platforms to sell its products, but the information is cluttered on every platform. This project is aiming to ensure users locate the information they desire and to purchase product successfully.

Problem

In the project initiation, the stakeholder wanted me to conduct a usability audit and improve the next version before they move the website to another platform to make users feel more engaged in the experience. After my research and evaluation, I discovered that users felt confused about the differences between the Home page and Landing Page. In addition, users fail to find the About Us. This makes them feel the brand is untrustworthy, and discourages them to purchase products.

Goal

Make an ease-to-use navigation system to provide a satisfactory experience to new and returning users.

Overview

Reseach

01

Research Discovery

Users lost interest within a second when they did not find the information as they expected

I was new to the team and had no experience using this website, so I did a quick research on my own to know how the current website does. Besides browsing the website like the users, I learned how users perceive the current website and if they can successfully complete the tasks they desire to on it from observation and interview.

Methodology

Interview

Affinity Map

Competitor Analysis

Interview

Finding 01

The Home Page and Handwash page confused user

Users swipe back and forth to understand the what are these two pages for, because they look similar.

Home page (Left) and Current Hand Soap page (Right)

"It feels like there are two home pages when I browse this website! "

- participant 1, with confuse 🤔

Finding 02

Excess of information discouraged users to learn more about the brand

Users scrolled down the page without paying attention to the content, and expected to see the product info at their first sight

"The information is not well-organized. I feel exhausted and not sure what I am reading..."

- participant 2, with tiredness 🤯

Finding 03

Fail to find the "About page" and it made them hard to trust the brand

0 out of 5 users successfully locate the About page, because they only check the menu. And this makes they feel the brand is not trust worthy

"This website appears untrustworthy to me without About Page, and I don't want to purchase from it"

- participant 3, with disappointment 😥

Competitor Analysis

Considering SESN's business strategy, the competitors I closely monitored are companies that provide customized services, including Aesop, Cha Tzu Tang, Yuancare, and Jing Shen Yu. The high-level takeaway from this analysis is to create a user-centered design that allows an effortless experience for the users to achieve the goal(s) that they came to the site with.

The insights that helped to shape SESN include the importance of:

intuitive nav structure
obvious calls-to-action
a clear path to locate desired products.

02

Redefine Problem

Users are confused by the navigation system and there is no clear storytelling on the home page

Based on the learnings from the research and the face-to-face interviews with potential users, I believe it is crucial to redesign the current web structure, so I started by analyzing the Information Architecture.

Current Information Architecture

What I found:

1. One section is repeated on different pages

2. Descriptions about either brands or products on the same page, which makes the storyline not clear

I proposed to eliminate the redundant parts and Hand wash page to improve the hierarchy of information

Challenge

The Hand Soap page was designed to promote a featured product, and the team wanted to remain its function

Redesigned information architecture

Solutions

To achieve business marketing goals while ensuring that the users will not lost in the navigation system, I proposed to use the Homepage as a landing page, and show featured products in the banner.

Design Focus

Clear Path and Good impression

To make users easy to browse and find the information they need more efficiently, I defined the four design focus below:

Add Call-To-Action on the Home page and prioritized sections
Re-ordering the sections with a clear title
Create a clear storyline by separating content related to the brand or products
Allow users to know what products or services are provided easily and as soon as possible

Design

03

Design & Iteration

I iterated the wireframe based on the internal feedbacks before going to interactive prototype

1. Add featured products section

it provides a quick view for novice users to have an idea of what this company makes and is served as a shortcut for expert users. However, the swiping function is removed based on user feedback.

2. Redesigned the layout

to improve consistency

3. Move the text and button

to ensure readability and responsiveness among different platforms

Wireframe of Landing Page

user flow of browsing product: Home page > Product Category > Hand Soap page

The products categories page was added in the second step to give new users a clearer view of all the products and scalability

Primary Design for Home page

1

Easy access for About us

Provide clear label for information of different categories

2

Call to Action button

Easy access for users want to purchase and a clear guide for what users can do

3

Before

The Home page was lengthy without clear visual hierarchy, and overwhelmed users without reasonable storytelling

After

The Redesign Home page has a clear visual hierarchy, pathway and divide information in a way user can easy digest

User Testing

04

Prototype & Testing

Users find the information more accessible

I recruited 10 participants for user testing to evaluate if the design helps users to complete the primary tasks. The tasks includes:

Locating product
Find the About Us page
Purchase Product

80% users successfully complete their tasks and say this website is helpful to understand the brand

05

Final Design

When I delivered my first wireframe, I was reminded of the importance of having a mobile-responsive design. Therefore, as I was first creating mockups for desktop, I was mindful of how all of the design elements would look on a smaller screen. I prototyped and tested my desktop design first, while I worked on mobile mockups on the side.

view desktop prototype

A Glimpse of other pages I designed

What I would do differently

This project was completed virtually, and everyone wore many hats due to the team's organization. I collaborated with the marketing team and product team via Google Meet, Asana, and Slack. Although I shared the wireframe before I dived into further detailed design, the team changed back and forth due to a lot of ambiguity among the projects. It would be more effective if we had proper documentation about the requirement, timeline, and process to keep everyone on the same page and aware of it. Moreover, I would initiate communication more frequently to get crucial information ASAP.