Improving website feature helps seniors join strength and balance classes.
An end-to-end process of the ‘Find a class’ feature on Live Stronger for Longer.
12 Jun, 2023
Overview
Live Stronger for Longer supports community driven Strength and Balance classes with the aim to help reduce serious falls with older adults across Aotearoa.
This piece of work looks at the Find a class functionality on the site, which has the aim of linking those older adults with the community strength and balance classes.
In our initial testing of existing features we found that older adults struggled to use the Find a class page and often opted to call or were likely to go with social suggestions rather than seek out the classes themselves.
Objective
To provide a refreshed user friendly service that helps link older adults with local classes.
Approach & deliverables
The aim for this piece of work was to deliver a refreshed website through UI design, streamlined user flows and information architecture.
As there were some project wide limitations, we were developing new modules in the CMS (Silverstripe) to eventually release in tandem with the CMS authors to roll out the new experience as a whole.
Challenges
As the original website was built externally, we lacked documentation around previous design decisions, a design system or cohesive branding.
The target audience for this website is one the digital team had minimal insights about, which required us to reach out to different community groups when testing.
Testing with Kaumātua
Along with a heuristic review of the existing website, I wanted to gather some customer feedback. I needed to understand the current state and how users currently navigate, did they find it easy and above all could they find a local class to attend.
Myself and the product team were invited to the National Kaumātua Conference, where we were able to set up a booth to engage with Māori seniors.
At the conference myself and the team ran user testing sessions on various devices looking at the current navigation experience.
First pass designs - how could functionality help our users
With the feedback we gathered at the National Kaumātua Conference we could see that the current find a class tool was not delivering a great experience, as the information they were being asked was not clear enough.
I completed some wireframes making use of different existing modules, and some new with the purpose of creating an experience that helped to guide users through the journey rather than present people with a default search.
The thinking behind this was to teach people about the classes as they fill out information. The classes have a lot of information around them that a customer needs to know and a simple search doesn’t provide that.
Guerilla testing
I set out to test with older adults in and around the city, to see which of the designs fit the need. The aim for guerilla testing was that I wanted potential users that had no idea about the classes or the existing experience as this was the key audience of the end product.
At the end of the guerilla testing there was one wireframe that stood out above the rest. The one that guided users through the journey rather than a typical search pattern.
Final build
Based on the results of the guerilla testing I set out pulling together some hi-fidelity designs to go over with the developers. This build required some more intricacies and technical nuances than the others and required closer dev/design engagement.
The big bang release is currently waiting on all core components to be finished before going live.
