Case Study: WDC

The Wisconsin Dairy Council is the nutrition education branch of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board a non-profit organization founded in 1983 by the dairy farmers of Wisconsin, and is fully funded by Wisconsin's dairy farm families. Their mission is "to help grow the demand for Wisconsin milk by providing programs that enhance the competitiveness of the state's dairy industry."

Role: Usability researcher (Student research team)

The Wisconsin Dairy Council website was used by a student research team to carry out a variety of usability research methods and tests ultimately to determine how the User Experience of the client’s website affects the delivery of their primary message. With a strong understanding of industry usability principles and heuristics, the student usability research team was given the task of designing and carrying out a number of research methods and tests on their client's website.

Once all research had been carried out and the data organized, a Website Interface Report was developed reporting the findings throughout the process and conclusions based on the current User Experience. Based on these findings recommendations were made by the research team to improve the website's overall User Experience.

Competitive Analysis

An important thing to consider when evaluating a website is how it compares to its competitors. With the Competitive Analysis method the strengths and weaknesses of industry competitors and similar websites were assesed. Some of the criteria considered involved other website's functionalities. Were they useful or not? What were they offering? What were the design trends? With Competitive Analysis, it makes it easier to potentially avoid any mistakes that competitors have made and utilize what may have been successful.

Heuristic Evaluation

In a Heuristic Evaluation a panel of experts test the usability of an interface. They will individually test the website and apply recognized usability principles (heuristics). A set of tasks were created for the evaluators to complete. These tasks echoed actions that a real user would perform on the website. The experts judged the tasks using heuristics and rated the severity of user experience problems on a number scale.

Card Sorting

The Card Sort method is used to create a successful Information Architecture. If good Information Architecture is completed the user will be able to easily navigate the website and complete their goals. In this method the researchers created a variety of cards with topics that would potentially be on the website. The researchers then set all the cards on a table and had a variety of participants rearrange the cards in a way that made sense to them. They grouped the cards and labeled them with titles that they saw fit. The results were then analyzed and applied to the Information Architecture.

Usability Testing

Ultimately the main purpose of usability research is to understand how to improve the user experience. The researchers recruited users who would potentially be actual site visitors. Each user was observed while they attempted to navigate the website and attempted to complete an assigned list of tasks. Through the observations the researchers were then able to determine how the users reacted to the website, whether they completed the tasks, and at what speed.

Hi, I'm Seth.

I am a user experience designer with a passion for creating technical solutions that are as useful as they are beautiful. It is my belief that the ideal customer experience is the most important and valuable factor in cultivating sustainable success in any industry.