RFECY CASESTUDY
The Resources for Exceptional Children and Youth (RFECY) Durham website serves a crucial role in providing information, services, and support to families, caregivers, and professionals working with children and youth with exceptional needs. As a primary online platform, it is essential that the RFECY website delivers an accessible, user-friendly experience to ensure that these vital resources are easy to locate and utilize.
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To achieve this, our team was tasked with conducting a heuristic evaluation of the RFECY website. This evaluation was aimed at identifying usability issues and pinpointing opportunities for improvement. By applying recognized usability principles, we tried to enhance the overall navigation, accessibility, and user experience of the website.
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This case study will outline our approach to the heuristic evaluation, the identified issues, and recommendations for changes that made the website more navigable and user-friendly for its diverse audience.
Objectives of the Evaluation:
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Assess the current usability of the RFECY website.
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Identify specific areas where users may encounter difficulties in navigation or accessing information.
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Provide actionable recommendations to improve the website’s design, structure, and overall user experience.
By focusing on these objectives, we aimed to ensure that the RFECY website fulfilled its mission of supporting exceptional children and youth by offering a seamless and intuitive online experience.
THE BEGINNING:
HEURISTICS EVALUATION
To begin the process, our team needed to figure out all potential usability issues, as well as take a closer look at whether the website's navigation was intuitive to users. Our first step was to conduct an extensive Heuristics Evaluation to better understand the website's user experience and utility. By addressing these issues beforehand, we were hoping to ensure that future user testing sessions would focus on gathering valuable insights rather than getting stuck on basic usability problems we wern't able to initially catch.
PAIN POINTS + TAKEAWAYS
As much information we were able to gather from our team's evalutation, there were three main key points outside of 'enhancement fixes' that we really wanted to focus on:
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Two different homepages were discovered in the original design, which led to user confusion on finding information.
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Too much text in both the web pages as well as the navigation infrastructure, which led to user uncertainty on where to find services.
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Color scheme as well as information architecture and aesthetic of the website needs to be reworked due to lackluster design and accessibility issues.
COLOR ACCESSIBILITY TESTING
After testing the RFECY homepage for Web Accessibility, we also found color contrast issues. As a solution to this problem, our team decided to rework both the navigation infrastructure, as well as the graphic design and color scheme. At the end of the day, our goal was to create an all-inclusive and straightforward space in compliance with website accessibility standards.
USER TESTING &
USABILITY TESTING
Once we completed our initial research of the RFECY website from the veiwpoint of designers, it was now time for us to conduct usability testing and User Interviews in order to gather user information to validate our design decisions and make any necessary adjustments before moving to the development phase. We also wanted first-hand feedback on the pain-points of the individuals associated with special needs youth when trying to seek important information.
We began with User Interviews, the objective being to gather insights and feedback from the target users of the RFECY Durham website to inform the redesign process. Our team's aim was to understand their needs, pain points, and expectations, in order to create a user-centered and effective website.
Next, we conducted Usability Tests for the website's navigation. The objective of this was to evaluate the user experience of the RFECY Durham website and identify any usability issues or areas for improvement. By observing users interact with the website, we aimed to gather valuable insights that will inform the redesign process and enhance the website's usability.
Once we had testing and interview results, our team created an Affinity Map in order to synthesize and consolidate the data into meaningful insights. By visually mapping out key insights and patterns, it became easier for us to prioritize design decisions and focus on addressing the most critical issues that the users face.
In conclusion, our heuristic evaluation of the Resources for Exceptional Children and Youth (RFECY) website provided valuable insights into its current usability and identified several areas where improvements could enhance navigation and the overall user experience. By addressing the issues highlighted in this evaluation, RFECY made significant improvement to the design and usability of the website, as well as made the website more in line with WCAG Guidelines (Level AAA). User Experience rating (on a scale of 1 to 5) of the website also improved from a 2 - 4 on desktop according to a RFECY stakeholder.
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The recommended changes—ranging from optimizing menu structures to improving content visibility and enhancing accessibility—were designed to help users more easily find the information and resources they need. Implementing these adjustments not only improved user satisfaction but also supported RFECY’s mission of providing critical assistance to exceptional children and youth.
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With these enhancements, the RFECY website will better serve its community by offering a more intuitive and efficient online experience, ensuring that essential resources are always just a few clicks away.
