Website Design

UX Research

@ Mingyi Foundation

The high level objective of the study is to understand the needs of parents with children of unique development, thus to inform the development of website design. This website has received the Innovative and Excellent Digital Publication award by Taiwan Ministry of Culture, standing out among 1,258 entries.

The most critical age for addressing late development in children is between 0-6 years old. However, in Taiwan, many children with late development have not received the necessary treatment due to late discovery. According to research, there are ~20k children per year with developmental delays in Taiwan. While the annual reporting rate is going up, only 41% of children with delays are reported before age 3. Ming Yi Foundation was seeking a solution to this issue.��Resource: Taiwan Control Department Report 2014-2019

The team needs research to build and refine a website to empower parents with children of unique developmental path.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

PROJECT GOAL

Late-developing children in Taiwan don’t receive necessary treatment

This project involved collaboration between research, design, content writing, development, and marketing teams. Coordinating across various functions was critical for the success of this project.

To make it even more complex was that, we partnered with 3 media companies simultaneously, so it was 4 organizations, including us, working together to create 2 websites, but also a series of online and in-person marketing activities. This required the management of multiple checkpoints across functions throughout the execution.

TEAM STRUCTURE

Various research methods were used in different phase of the project, to explore problem space, define user groups, generate concepts and evaluate design. The team spent the first 6 months deep-diving into the problem space, looked into government data, and had insightful talks with parents and experts in this field (pediatricians, children occupational therapists, nonprofits for children early intervention)

My major involvement was in the later 8 months leading UX Research to generate concepts to build and refine the website usability. My responsibilities include past insights synthesis, end-to-end UX research planning & execution, workshop facilitation, manage external partners and project timeline.

METHODS & MY ROLES

What is?

Define

💭 Which problem can we impact the most?

💭 What is the business purpose behind?

💭 How decisions will this research be influencing?

💭 What are the constraints in time and resources?

🛠️ Stakeholder Interviews, Research Scoping and Planning, STP, Value Proposition Map, Key Performance Index, Survey

What if?

Empathize

💭 How does their experience look like?

💭 What are their problems?

💭 What task are they trying to complete?

🛠️ User Interviews, Personas, Journey Maps, Past Insights Synthesis

Test

💭 How users feel about content/design?

💭 How usable is our product? How can we improve?

💭 What do users like/dislike?

🛠️ A/B Testing, Moderated & Unmoderated Usability Testing

What matters?

What works?

Discover

💭 What is the nature of the problem?

💭 What do we already know?

💭 What can we learn from current data?

🛠️ User interviews, Literature Review, Survey

Develop

💭 What is the user flow?

💭 How can we design the experience?

🛠️ Past Insights Synthesis, Workshop, Translate insights to actionable items, collaborate with teams of design, content writing, developer and marketing.

What wows?

Month 1 - Month 6 (Exploratory) : Understand Problem Space

Month 7 - Month 14 (Generative, Evaluative) : Build, Measure, Iterate

RESEARCH GOALS

Generative Research Goals

• Synthesize insights from research in the last 6 months to generate website UX design concepts/features
• Clarify personas and user journey map

​

Evaluative Research Goals

• Evaluate the usability of website Information Architecture
• Evaluate overall appeal to website visual design
• Evaluate relevance/helpfulness of contents
• Evaluate the effectiveness and discoverability of user interactions with the navigation menu, developmental milestone page, early intervention information and resource pages

METHODS 1/2

Discover

Define

Empathize

Develop

Test

Past Insights Synthesis + Workshop:

Competitive Benchmarking:

Clarified Persona & Journey Map x Web Features:

Kick-off design meeting:

• Pull together and review all our findings in the last 6 months and facilitate workshop within our team to debrief findings and generate website UX concepts, using affinity map.

• I conducted best practices research of existing website inside or outside Taiwan to identify gaps and opportunities of our website design.

• I synthesized the previous findings to more clarified personas, and user journey; and further match them to potential website UX features.

• With all these, I took the lead to launch kick-off design meeting with our external partners.
• I clearly communicated the problems, current gaps, ideas for UX/UI design.
• And to set up for success, I mapped out a detailed project timeline and key performance metrics to discuss and make sure everyone is on the same page.
• Such as metrics for views, clicks, time spent. Plus qualitative ones such as how easy parents are to find the information they need and how relevant is the information provided.

Team Workshop on Miro

Personas Demo

Matching Journey Map to Opportunities

Design Kick-off / Alignment meeting deck Demo

Competitive Research Demo

METHODS 2/2

Discover

Define

Empathize

Develop

Test

Moderated/Unmoderated Usability Testings, A/B Testing

In-depth interviews

• So, with the alignment in mind, to validate the usability, desirability and content relevance of our website, I conducted:�2 rounds of Moderated Usability Testings with 20 parents�1 round of Unmoderated Usability Testing with 400+ parents
• Participants�parents*20: with and without experience in early intervention, encompassing 4 types of personas (Ultra-motivated, The Norm, The Challenged, The vulnerable)
• Operating Devices PC & mobile phone
• Stimuli 2 High-fidelity websites
• 3 major parts of usability testings:
• Part 1�before I started asking any questions, I allowed them to browse the website freely on their own for 4 min. This not only warm up the session but also allowed me to gain insights on where they stopped, or their path of searching information they need.
• Part 2�I give them scenarios, and asked them to complete tasks and with followed-up questions.
• Part 3�I asked them to rate their experience on the scale of 1 to 5.�While rating, the description helped participants to reflect their experience in different aspects, and provide deeper insights.

• To understand comprehensive perspectives on website content, I also conducted in-depth interviews with experts in the field.�Participants�pediatrician*1, occupational therapist*1, social worker*2, early intervention policy advocates*2

Usability Testing Questions Demo

Compare Results from versions tested

KEY INSIGHTS & IMPACT 1/3

Discover

Define

Empathize

Develop

Test

Insights

Strategic Impacts

• There are 20k children per year with developmental delay in Taiwan, but only 41% of children with delays are reported before age 3.
• 4 major challenges prevalent in Taiwan's early intervention landscape: lack awareness of child, development, over reliance on medical resources (neglecting activities at home), and fragmented support systems.
• Information needs are paramount throughout the whole user journey, however, there is lack of structured and comprehensive information sources to empower parent.
• The key information is empowering parent to understand basic child development and signs of delay, and know how to act early if there are concerns.
• Families’ or caregiver’s perspectives and actions towards child development and early intervention are largely impacted by their socio-economic/educational level, type of major caregiver (grandparents, mother, father), parenting capability (time and resources spent)

Foundational Insights Demo

• Fuel 4 directions of solutions
• Education for parents (website, app, courses, consultation hot lines)
• Awareness Initiatives (doctor visit brochures, KOLs contents)
• Family Support (Social worker coordination, Part time children support, coaching for parents, community support)
• Product Design for Kids (toys, apps, play space)

• Clarified 4 types of families/parents and our target segments moving forward
• Considering user feedback, impact, and organizational goals, we decided to �1.build a digital tool - a website, to empower these families.�2.provide social workers of this field information and resources

KEY INSIGHTS & IMPACT 2/3

Discover

Define

Empathize

Develop

Test

Key Insights & Product Impact

1. Improved resource search
1. Initially, the resources were classified into medical, social, and public categories
2. Upon feedback, many users were unsure of where to begin and which resources were most suitable for their specific phase
3. Redesigned with a process diagram outlining the necessary steps for each phase and connecting relevant resources
4. The diagram provides guidance on actions to take when identifying symptoms, reporting incidents, searching for medical assessments, arranging transfers, and locating treatment programs across various settings

Design Insights / Action Items Demo

KEY INSIGHTS & IMPACT 3/3

Discover

Define

Empathize

Develop

Test

Evaluative, Quantitative Insights Demo

Drop-out rate

Avg time on page

Ranking

Pages

Views

%

Popular pages & topics

2.Improved IA

• The website's initial design presented a mixture of content for parents with or without late-developing children.
• Through research, we discovered that these two groups of parents search for distinct information.
• The refined IA design ensures that parents can easily navigate and access relevant information based on their specific needs and circumstances.
• Redesigned the website's information architecture (IA) to enhance accessibility for both types of parents.
• The navigation menu now features four main sections. The first two sections cater to parents without late-developing children and provide information on general child development milestones and day-to-day activities to support their child's growth.
• The other two sections are specifically designed to meet the needs of parents with late-developing children. These sections offer insights into the different types of late development, guidance on what to do during each phase, available treatment options, and a list of resources for early intervention.

Key Insights & Product Impact 2/2

MY LEARNINGS

• Flexibility and open discussion is the key for cross-functional collaboration, . So our team is able to adapt to unexpected changes, and ensure everyone felt heard and understood.
• To ensure effective collaboration, I initiated regular cross-functional meetings where each team shared updates, insights and challenges.
• Additionally, I also set up a group chat as a centralized communication channel for quick information sharing and issue resolution in-between regular meetings.
• The more you engage stakeholders in every stage of the research process, the more they are willing to act upon your findings.

Thank you

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