Issue
Every year, the Sears UXR team conducts an end to end study to gain insight into any usability issues before the holiday season. This study also helped to inform if changes made throughout the year have made a positive impact on our members’ experiences.
* I cannot discuss specific findings or design recommendations but I can discuss the process and general outcome of the study.
Process
These moderated lab studies were conducted for both Sears and Kmart with a concentration on two of three platforms: desktop, mWeb (or the mobile website), or the Sears/Kmart app. For Sears, we focused on the desktop site and mWeb while for Kmart, we studied desktop and the Kmart app. Below is the process our team went through for the Sears test. This process was repeated when we tested the Kmart experience two weeks later. In total, 20 users participated in this Sears & Kmart study.
Outcome
Over 25 usability issues were found and documented for the Sears desktop and mWeb experience. The report included detailed information on user pain points as well as clips of user struggles, quotes from users regarding their experience, and design recommendations.
The findings from this study gave teams a sense of what Sears users found to be working and not working in terms of findability, making a purchase, and (if applicable) their store pickup experience. Design teams incorporated recommendations from this study which helped increase findability and the ease of purchasing an item online - which was proven through later research.
My Contributions:
Create protocol
Schedule participants
Act as moderator (for mobile study)
Observe behaviors
Document observations
Create and score heuristics
Analyze data
Create and present report (for desktop study)