St. Paul Public Works Website: Heuristic Evaluation & Usability Testing
Project Overview
As a UX Researcher, I worked with a team of four colleagues to evaluate the level of navigation, usability, and accessibility of the existing St. Paul Public Works residential garbage and recycling pages for a potential website redesign.
My Role: UX Researcher.
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Methods
User Research, Heuristic Evaluation, Usability Testing, and Affinity Diagraming.
Tools
Figma, Office 365, Microsoft Word, Parallels Desktop, Google Docs, Keynote, Zoom and Skype.
Garbage Disposal and recycling; good for the environment but confusing for people.
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According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2023, over 303,820 people live in St. Paul Minnesota.
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However, St. Paul residents might not fully understand the complex guidelines of proper garbage disposal and recycling.
Defining The Problem
Due to the complex and confusing guidelines of proper garbage disposal and recycling, environmentally conscious and time-constrained St. Paul residents need access to a centralized source of specific information to help them feel confident in their ability to correctly dispose of waste and recycle unwanted items in their available time.
Project and Research Goals
Project Goals
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Determine if site visitors can easily find the information they need.
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Determine if essential content is visible on the site.
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Determine the website usability level. ​
Research Goals
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To better understand how users navigate the public works section to find information regarding garbage and recycling disposal.
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Gain insights and feedback about the usability and navigation of garbage and recycling pages.
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Identify pain points when users are trying to leverage services for their waste collection.
Research
Heuristic Evaluation
This is the visually documented Heuristic Evaluation of the key issues on SPPW garbage and recycling pages based on what site information users need to find. Select to view Heuristic Evaluation.
User Demographic Information
Primary User Groups
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Residents of single-family houses looking to manage their waste appropriately.
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Multi-unit apartment dwellers looking to manage their waste appropriately.
Secondary User Groups
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Community event planners concerned with proper disposal procedures.
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Special waste-generating hobbyists looking to dispose of their materials properly.​
Usability Testing Findings
What Went Well
“I like how the site uses icons and large buttons, and site layout.”
“Finding information about garbage collection days for a specific neighborhood is very straightforward.”
“I like the expanded information for accepted items.”
What Can Be Improved
“Sections aren’t clearly identified; just one long page.”
“You have to make things easy on the website to navigate and find.”
“There is a lot of stuff on this page that I don’t care about.”
Affinity Diagram
This affinity diagram is comprised of qualitative data gathered from usability testing with 10 participants.
Key Recommendation for Improvement
Reduce Cognitive Load for site users
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Issues with pages containing too much content were persistent throughout each testing session. Although not every site page contains a lot of information, users can become overwhelmed with the strain on their cognitive load by having to navigate and process information that does not help them accomplish their objectives easily and quickly.
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Information needs to clearly communicated to site users, and this inconsistency varies between different site pages and sections. In the case of the bulky item collection page, the additional mattress pick-up section is the only one that provides some specific information, but its placement in the page hierarchy might frustrate and confuse some users causing them to leave the page or website altogether.
Next Steps
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Meet with the SPPW web team work together on updating and the website.
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Conducting additional heuristic evaluation and usability testing sessions to discover additional site problems.
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Iterate website design until a final version is ready to be implemented.
​Let’s work together to Keep St. Paul and our planet Clean!