Enabling Village
TLDR Version
Objective:
Design a section for the website to showcase the facilities, drive venue utilisation, and streamline the booking process.
Solution:
To provide a seamless and hassle-free online booking experience, we will present a user-centred, task-based solution that will allow the user to make a more informed decision on their facility booking.
Final Prototype:
High fidelity prototype versions for Solution 01 and Solution 02.
Results:
Users were able to complete the tasks faster and gave higher positive ratings of usability and ease of use.
OVERVIEW
Project 5 for the User Experience Design Immersive at General Assembly was a team project where we utilised our knowledge and skills learnt from the course to work on a client project.
Client: Digital lead of SG Enable
Duration: 3 weeks
Deliverable:
- User research project plan
- Takeaways from user research
- Personas
- Customer journey map
- User flows
- Wireframes and prototypes (paper is sufficient)
- Client-facing presentation
Role:
- Doren Ho [UX Research and Design]
- Koh Khai Liang [UX and Visual Design]
- Shawn Ee [UX and Visual Design]
About Enabling Village
Enabling Village is a community space operated by SG Enable (Singapore) that serves as a focal point for disability-related pre-employment training, as well as inclusive leisure for individuals and families with disabilities. It is home to several social enterprises that train, hire, and directly provide services to individuals and families with disabilities.
Client Brief
Starting from 2017, venues at the Enabling Village are open for members of the public to rental, with priority given to those with accessibility requirements. The official website currently has a downloadable PDF document explaining the facilities. Booking is done manually, through an email address.
The objective of the project is to design a section for the website to showcase the facilities, drive venue utilisation, and streamline the booking process.
RESEARCH
Heuristic Evaluation
We studied the usability heuristics of the current website using Jakob Nielsen's 10 Heuristics.
Summary of the heuristic evaluation
Target User
We identified our target user group as people who have experience in booking facilities for corporate events because they provide more opportunity for maximising facility booking.
Contextual Inquiry
To gain a deeper perspective of how the current booking process is being handled, we spoke to the staff officer in charge of handling customer email enquiries and bookings. The key takeaway of the current booking process is:
- Customers are required to email the office (using the email address provided on the booking web page) for booking enquiries.
- The office will reply customers with a booking form (Word document).
- Customers have to complete the booking form and email it to the office.
- The office will process customers' bookings manually.
Due to confidentiality concerns, further details of how the current booking process is being handled will not be disclosed publicly here.
User Research
We recruited 9 individuals who fit the profile of our target user for user interviews and usability tests on the current website. We want to know their needs and pain points that are deterring them from booking a facility for corporate events.
We conducted user interviews to find out their behaviours and expectations and their problems when booking facilities. Additionally, we observed how they use the current website in usability test to get feedback on the website functionality and gain insights into their motivations and satisfaction.
Based on our user interviews, we discovered that our users make corporate facility bookings on desktops and most of them do so quarterly. Their needs and pain points in corporate facility booking are as follow:
They want a fast and easy online booking process.
The current booking process requires users to email their booking request, after which they would receive a booking form that they would need to complete and email to the staff. This manual booking process is time-consuming, especially the part of form filling because the form requires many information details from them that they think are unnecessary. Most importantly, having to email booking request to receive a booking form is deemed redundant because they could have been provided with the form fields on the website directly.
They want to know the facility availability so as not to waste their time on booking.
However, facility availability status is currently not provided on the website. Users do not want to end up emailing a booking request for a facility that has already been fully booked for the period of time they want to book.
They only want to book facilities that meet their company requirements.
Users have highlighted that they want to find the ideal facility easily on the website based on their company’s requirements. Such requirements include price, facility availability, holding capacity, etc.
They want to have more visuals and information about the facilities on the website.
These include more views of the facilities and at different angles to help users better visualise the facility layout and arrangement of equipment. Such information would aid them in their decision making process.
We synthesised notes from our interviews and observations with an affinity diagram to uncover underlying our target users' motivations.
Users' needs
To focus our design efforts on solving users’ problems, we summarised our user research into a persona.
To understand our user behaviour better and reveal gaps and opportunities, we illustrate how our persona might interact with Enabling Village over time and across channels from her perspective. Overall, most of our persona’s needs and pain points occur when searching for information and booking a facility on the website and so this is where we would focus our design efforts to facilitate the booking process.
SOLUTION
Based on our user research, we defined our proposed solution as:
To provide a seamless and hassle-free online booking experience, we will present a user-centred, task-based solution that will allow the user to make a more informed decision on their facility booking.
Solution Features
Starting with the big picture of considering business impact and user needs, we prioritise our solution features that address the greatest user needs that are revealed in our customer journey map. Addressing these needs would ease the user’s process of searching for information and booking facilities on the website.
These high priority features are: to shorten booking form, to provide more visuals and information of the facilities, to arrange information better, to provide facility availability based on date and time (with a search filter function), and to introduce an online booking system.
Service Design
The product/service here is the online facility booking experience. Elevating this experience can be done by focusing on all touch points that make the entire experience and identifying digital and service opportunities in the entire system.
However, there are business and operational constraints revealed by our client that would restrict what we could propose. For example, they might not have the funding, technical capability and management approval for a fully automated online booking system where the processing of bookings could even be automated. Their developer is also new on board and might not be able to introduce a search filter function for date and time in a relatively short time. They would also require stakeholder review on whether the questions on the booking form could be reduced.
These constraints shaped how we approached our design. Therefore, we came up with 3 possible solutions and detailed each aspect of the service in our service design blueprints so as to inform implementation plan for new services.
Total waiting time for users could be reduced by providing facility availability based on date and time (with a search filter function), and allowing users to directly book available facility online without having to download and email booking form.
This is the most technically feasible solution that could be done in a relatively short time. Total waiting time for users could also be reduced by a bit by allowing users to download booking form directly from the website without having to email and wait to receive booking form.
This is a fully automated online booking system that could be accomplished in the longer term if funding, technical capability and management approval were given.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
We took to Axure to create high fidelity prototype versions for Solution 01 and Solution 02.
Usability Test
Five participants who fit our persona were recruited for a usability test of the prototype of Solution 01 on laptop. The goal of this usability test was to observe how they use the prototype (e.g. noting where they begin navigation as well) to get feedback on the website functionality and whether it was more usable and findable than the current website. The same set of tasks were given for both usability tests on the current website and on the prototype for fair comparison.
Tasks of Usability Test
Task 01 - Looking for information: You are looking for a potential event venue to host an annual general meeting for your company. Where can you find this information on this website?
Task 02 - Making a booking: Your company wishes to make a booking for Hall 1 in Enabling Village for 10th and 11th July, 8.30am to 12.30pm. How can you do that on this website?
Task 03 - Booking cancellation: Your Company has booked Hall 1 with Enabling Village but due to unforeseen circumstances, you are told to cancel the booking. How can you do that on this website?
Task 04 - Making enquiries: You have some enquiries about booking an event space in Enabling Village. How will you make these enquiries?
Generally, users felt that an instant confirmation booking system would be more convenient. They felt that the waiting time for booking confirmation is unnecessary. One of the users thought that having a 360-degree view of the venues would help him to visualise better without making a trip down to recce. Users also highlighted that the booking form could be shortened.
The usability test show that Solution 01 is more usable than the existing website. Users were able to complete the tasks faster and gave higher positive ratings of usability and ease of use.
At 90% confidence level, the mean time on task for the prototype of Solution 01 would be shorter than that of the current website. The line on each chart is the confidence interval = 2 x margin of error.
At 90% confidence level, the mean time on task for the prototype of Solution 01 would be shorter than that of the current website. The line on each chart is the confidence interval = 2 x margin of error
User Flows
The goal of user flows was to map the flows that take users from their entry pages through conversion funnels. There could have been several entry points, not necessarily starting from the home page and/or in a linear flow. However, for simple comparison, user flows starting from the home page were mapped out for the existing website and Solution 01. It was evident that the path between users' first click and their intended destination was shortened.
