Role
UX Researcher | UX Designer
Client
Mau Loa Sweets
Methods & Tools
Heuristic Analysis, User Evaluations, Affinity Diagrams
Project Background
Mau Loa Sweets is a bakery in Andover, Minnesota, specializing in custom-decorated cookies and sweet treats. The focus of this project was to evaluate the usability of the Mau Loa Sweets’ current website. The client stated that their goal with is to attract and inform potential clients and customers, while encouraging custom cookie orders, holiday pre-sales, and sign-ups for cookie decorating classes. With this in mind, my research and design team conducted several individual heuristic analyses of the website and also performed a round of usability evaluations over Zoom.
Investigating the Website
One of the primary things that I wanted to do was to understand the layout, flow, and location for the information on the website and navigation, so that I could gather impressions on specific aspects when conducting tests later. The best way to get this information was to first go through it myself, in the lens of the goals that the client had prepared.
At the end of my initial research I consolidated my main feedback into the following four points below:
Aesthetic and visual placement can be distracting, too much text and long sections forces users to scroll a lot on the pages
Copy and naming conventions for navigation menu and CTAs should be standardized with other similar places
Too much text, becomes noise and makes it difficult to understand what important information is
Despite this, the website is functional and there were no major issues with purchasing tickets or the pre-sale bundle
Image quality is good, cookies are very aesthetically pleasing and professional
I began my research by conducting two individual website evaluations with participants that I sourced myself. For this project, I collaborated with two other researchers and designers, who also held their own interviews. We worked as a team to conduct three more user evaluations that were chosen specifically by Prime Digital Academy and gathered insights and recommendations from the participants.
Left: a chart with details about the evaluation participants and their experiences with custom sweets and bakeries similar to Mau Loa.
Rendezvousing back with the team after our individual and group evaluations, we decided that the best course of action in order to parse this immense amount of information we had gathered was to lay all of it out in a FigJam board. From there we created Affinity Diagrams to coalesce the main critiques, positive findings, and recommendations that the participants had for the website.
Right: a screenshots of the Affinity Diagrams created to organize the feedback from the evaluations.
Key Findings
Users really liked the designs of the cookies
Users were able to use the site as intended
Users had trouble finding relevant information
Issues with clarity and the amount of text
Users had difficulties understanding what some menu options and words meant
Recommendations
Simplify the home page
Mood boards are a unique aspect of the business, explain what those are clearly and how to submit them
Users wanted to see availability or a schedule for the business due to limited supply, include a calendar view
Use more standardized terminology and reduce the number of items in the navigation, nest information and link to relevant pages more
Right: Excerpts from the findings and recommendations report. Suggesting specific changes based on feedback from users.