Discover

“Outdated”

“Disorganized”

“A huge pain”

These are all words that interviewees used to describe their experiences interacting with government websites. To make Cherokee County’s website responsive and accessible, there is the additional challenge of decreased tech access and low tech literacy among the residents.

Problem Statement

Cherokee County needs a way to make their website more organized and accessible so that they can allow their residents to complete necessary tasks online in order to save time.

Solution Statement

Provide the county residents intuitive ways to navigate Cherokee County’s website through implementing a chat support feature.

Based on responses from our user research, we decided to implement a live chat feature as an addition to the website that would provide users an easy way to search, and to reach customer service quickly, thus increasing the accessibility of the website.

For this project, I contributed to the team during the research and testing phases of the double diamond process.

Researching the demographics of Cherokee County helped to ensure our designs would be user centered.

• Average population: 56,895

• 17.1% are over 65 years old

• 67% with internet access

The demographics and user research results informed us that we needed to keep accessibility at the forefront in our designs.

To gain a better understanding of users needs, I designed a survey to gather quantitative data.

To deepen understanding of the needs and pain points of rural residents from county websites, I designed contextual interview questions for one-on-one interviews with 5 users who

• live or have lived in rural areas in the East Coast of the US and

• have interacted with a government website in the past year

Define

Based on user research, I contributed to creating the following two personas to guide the design process.

The list of How Might We questions were then created in order to address user needs from official websites

How might we…?

• Help users navigate the county website efficiently?

• Organize website information so it is accurate and easy to digest?

• Help users access necessary information easily without stress?

• Help users feel a personal connection when accessing the website?

• Help users find an intuitive way to contact customer service?

Synthesizing data from user interviews, multiple interviewees reported feeling much more satisfaction with websites in general if they had an easy way to reach customer service quickly. This insight lead to the team designing a live chat function as an additional feature to the website.

Develop

Considering the needs of the demographic, a mood board was created that kept the consistent colors and typography of the current website to decrease confusion among the users who might already be familiar with the site as well as to build trust with the site.

Design decisions made:

• Keep the current typography

• Keep current colors blue and yellow to remain consistent with the current website

• Ensure large font size for accessibility

Low-fidelity Wireframes

Some of the design decisions that were made during this phase include

• UX writing with friendly tone of voice to build trust

• Large buttons with enlarged fonts for accessibility

• Using a person icon or Cherokee County logo to personalize experience

 High-fidelity Prototype

Deliver

Testing the prototype

To test out our design, I created the usability test using Maze, with with a total of 11 testers. Testers were observed on how they accessed the chat function to search for information and reach customer service.

Usability Test Hypothesis

• Users will be able to access the most frequently utilized functions of the page with a chat function

• The chat function will help users save time by increasing the efficiency of their searches

• The chat function will make searches more intuitive for users

I was quite disheartened to find a low success rate for the first test.

Participants reported that they were confused by the instructions, and had difficulty completing the second task, which was reaching customer service through the chat function.

Iterate then test again

The average success rate from our second usability test was higher, which meant we were on the right track. However, the results for task #2 of the second test showed that the design still had room for improvement.

Final Usability Test

In order to closely simulate the demographic of Cherokee County, the final usability test was conducted using one-on-one online interviews with 5 testers who are:

• above 60-years old

• not technically savvy

• have utilized government websites recently to complete tasks such as renewing drivers licenses or passports.

“I have had bad experiences with chat functions so it’s important for me to feel like I am in a one-on-one conversation”

—Tester Participant A, female, 60’s

“If I need help, I want to just click once to get help”

—Test Participant B, male, 60’s

“I have gotten used to these types of decision trees in the chat functions. The experience was as expected.”

—Test Participant C, male, 70’s

Conclusion

One of our hypotheses was that the chat function users would help users be more efficient with their searches on a large website. What we learned during qualitative usability testing was that

• Hesitation rates among non-technically savvy users are quite high: users who are not tech savvy tend to hesitate with each option and prefer to have someone guide them step-by step.

• User satisfaction was rated higher if they can reach customer service quickly: users who were able to use the chat function to reach customer service rated the chat higher than those who did not find the chat quickly.

From the test results, we can conclude that although users who are not tech savvy may still take a long time using the chat function to complete their tasks, having an additional option to get to customer service, in addition to the “Contact Us” button on the homepage, offers users another pathway to success.

Challenges

• As we did not have access to site analytics, it was difficult to make design decisions regarding its intended users. The team overcame this challenge by making a best guess through secondary research and competitive analysis of other county websites.

• Finding users actually from Cherokee County or rural South Carolina was difficult. We tried our best at solving the issue by interviewing users from rural areas on the East Coast of the US, but our data may not ideally reflect actual users.

• Designing technology for users who are not technologically savvy is a definite challenge, and we worked to overcome this challenge by conducting usability test with users who are not technologically savvy in order to get the most accurate test results.

 Next Steps

• Further iterate on current chat design to increase user success rate. Conduct A/B testing to assess which designs will support user satisfaction and increase user success.

• Focus on improving the information architecture of the entire website to increase user success and satisfaction interacting with county site.

Thank you for reading!