User Trialling: Rijksstudio

Researching the Rijksstudio's user experience

Client
University Assignment

Duration
3 months
October - December 2020

Project Type
Group Project
5 Students, 5 Nationalities

My Role
UX Researcher, Assistant UX Lead

Overview

This project was a group project during my first semester of UX Design study. The group consisted of 5 members. In this assignment, we had to conduct research about the user experience of the Rijksstudio - a platform from the Rijksmuseum. We had to come up with our own research questions and decide which part of the website we want to do research about. Based on our research questions, we had to conduct user trials and observe participants. Afterward, we had to analyze the data as a group and come up with a conclusion. This project was documented with a research report.

The Process

We started this project by analyzing the current state of the system by writing an exploration report and creating a flow chart. After this, we discussed our findings and defined the research questions. Based on our research questions we recruited participants for our target group and created a research protocol. Each member of the group conducted one user trialing, which included observation and was followed by an interview. Once we had collected the data we processed and analyzed them. Afterward, we answered our research questions and came up with recommendations for improvements to the website of the Rijksstudio.

The Research Questions

Based on our findings by exploring the website we formulated the following research questions:

  • What do young adults, who are interested in art actually do during user trialing when using Rijksstudio?

  • What usability problems are users facing when using Rijksstudio? What causes these problems?

  • How do the website’s layout and UI elements help a user to follow its flow and support what a user does?

  • How do young adults, who are interested in art, experience the flow of the Rijksstudio?

The Results

Users of the Rijksstudio mainly discovered the website’s functions by themselves without doing the Rijksstudio tour and they mostly enjoyed scrolling through the Rijksstudio exploring artworks they liked.

Some of the UI elements of the Rijksstudio website were misleading to the users. For example, users misinterpreted the profile picture place holder to lead them to their profile, but it led them to the front page of the Rijksstudio.

The misleading UI elements led to some usability problems, which resulted in some users not being able to finish a task. For example, users misunderstood the scissor’s icon function. They thought that the scissors icon had the function, to cut a piece of the artwork and save it to one of their collections. However, the scissors function is to either order this work or to download it.

The users explained that the overall experience of the flow of the Rijksstudio was good. Users found it easy to navigate even though they came across minor usability problems and might not have approached a task in the most efficient way.

Take Aways

During this project I achieved the following learning objectives, understand and execute all steps of the cycle of basic empirical research (setting the aim, formulating research questions, making a set-up/design, collecting data, analyzing data, communicating the results), specifically for qualitative usability research (User Trialling).