AEIOU is a not-for-profit organization and registered charity established in 2005 that delivers high-quality therapy and care for children aged 2-6. They are an approved NDIS provider and provide early intervention that enables children with autism to live their best lives.
User Experience Audit for AEIOU Website
Analyzing usability & accessibility and providing solutions on autism care providers website
The Problem
After receiving reports from multiple clients having trouble navigating the site, AEIOU got in touch with Pivotal to assess the issues. In addition, their SEO agency had reviewed the site and identified some issues. We suggested that we perform a UX audit on the site to analyze these issues and find solutions to each.
The Client
THE PROCESS
Analyzing Analytics...
Prior to beginning the audit, we implemented Hotjar tracking on the site, to get better insights on how users were interacting with the site. We let Hotjar and Google Analytics run uninterrupted for several weeks before reviewing the data. This is where I kick off the audit. Analyzing the data, we can already draw some conclusions. In particular, the Hotjar recordings would prove incredibly useful for observing user behaviour and it showed us exactly how frustrating navigating the site could be. It also highlighted several edge-case scenarios where users would be completely blocked by some impossible hurdle and would give up entirely.
THE PROCESS
What do the users think?
The second thing I looked at was WCAG compliance; utilizing accessibilitychecker.org. Given that they are an organisation aimed at helping families of Autism, accessibility should be a key consideration. This review immediately identified several issues that would need to be addressed, and we would do so using an accessibility tool called UserWay.
Next, we used feedback from real users to generate 3 distinct user personas and mapped user stories/journeys for each. These asked serious questions of the interface, and in the case of all 3 personas, the experience would fall short. From here it was obvious that significant work was required. By now, we had a ton of confirmed issues that we could provide recommendations for.
We’ve very recently started to address some of these issues by redesigning some key pages to make them more user-friendly.
The Little Details
An interesting find, and a perfect example of how users define what’s important in your product; the tracking data revealed that despite not being a focus point at all for the client, the careers page was consistently among the most frequently accessed pages. Following our recommendations were some “food for thought” questions that I posed to the client. These included questions designed to get them thinking more from their user’s perspective, so that they can figure out what purpose this site really has.