When Mangahigh set out to improve its teacher onboarding experience, the design team wanted to ensure their efforts hit the mark. Usability testing was the answer, helping validate the designs before they reached production. This process provided valuable insights into how teachers interacted with the platform, ultimately guiding improvements to enhance the overall user experience.
The Challenge: Validating New Onboarding Features
The Mangahigh team had been working on three key features to enhance the teacher onboarding process: a welcome modal to introduce users to the platform, tooltips to guide them through administrative tasks, and a "What's New" section to keep them updated on platform changes. Before releasing these features, it was crucial to ensure they were intuitive and effective. As a UX researcher, my role was to organize and execute a usability test to gather actionable insights for the design team.
The Process
We approached this project with a clear structure and collaborative spirit. Working with two UX designers and a project manager, we mapped out a plan to test the new features. The testing process relied on Maze for conducting unmoderated remote testing, Figma for creating prototypes, and Google Slides for presenting our findings to stakeholders. The entire effort spanned a week, with two days dedicated to planning, one day for testing, and two days for reviewing and analyzing the results.
The study focused on three primary objectives: determining whether users could remember key steps from the welcome modal, identifying how effectively they could locate and use the tooltips, and assessing their ability to navigate to the "What's New" section. By creating targeted tasks for these features, we aimed to uncover usability issues and areas for improvement.
What We Discovered
The results of the usability test were revealing. For the welcome modal, only two out of five participants successfully remembered the steps it outlined. Several users skipped the modal entirely, eager to jump straight into the platform. This highlighted the need to present information more prominently and make it instantly memorable.
The tooltips posed an even greater challenge. Only one participant successfully located and used them. The rest became lost, overwhelmed by the competing features on the admin page. This pointed to a need for simplifying the page layout and improving the visibility of tooltips to ensure they stood out.
The "What's New" section fared slightly better, with three participants navigating to it within 20 seconds. However, the intercom help button proved to be a significant distraction, drawing attention away from the section. Reducing the size of the intercom button emerged as a simple yet effective solution to guide users more effectively.
Acting on Feedback
The findings from this test were instrumental in shaping the next steps for the project. We recommended refining the designs to address the issues uncovered during testing. This included reworking the welcome modal to ensure the information was clear and memorable, simplifying the layout of the admin page to make tooltips easier to find, and adjusting the placement and size of the intercom button to reduce distractions.
Key Takeaways
- Focused testing yields precise, actionable insights
- Unmoderated testing provides quick feedback but has limitations
- Visual hierarchy significantly impacts feature discoverability
- User behavior often differs from design assumptions
Looking Forward
This project underscored the importance of focused testing. By asking specific questions and using targeted prototypes, we were able to gather precise data that directly informed design decisions. At the same time, it highlighted the limitations of unmoderated testing. While this method provided quick insights, it lacked the ability to explore users' thought processes in depth. Despite this, the data collected during this study established a valuable benchmark for evaluating future design iterations.
Thank you for reading!
Want to work with me? Feel free to contact me!
...or just say hello on my social media.