The Flux Factory
Case Studies
Flux Factory is an organization that supports emerging artists through Artist-in-Residences, exhibitions, education, and other collaborative opportunities. The website provides detailed information about the public programs, Artist-in-residencies, and all their locations, and offers support.
We used remote moderated user testing as a usability evaluation method for the project. This method could be used to evaluate an interface or product. The participants were required to complete a total of 4 tasks developed by the researchers, as well as a pre-test questionnaire, some post-task questions evaluating the success/failure and difficulty of the tasks, and a post-test questionnaire about the participants’ overall user experience.
Our objectives were to understand the Flux Factory website by using the following questions
Our goal was to provide recommendations and mockups to improve the desktop user experience, aligning with Flux Factory's mission of supporting artists and fostering sustainable communities.
The scope of this project is to enhance the usability of the Flux Factory website by identifying and addressing navigation and discoverability issues through usability studies and testing.
Our target audience was:
Our study focused on testing key functions of the website (e.g., attending an event, donating money, participating in a program as an artist), as well as evaluating its information architecture and design components.
The participants widely reported that although the website was very informative, it suffered from having too much text; selective highlighting, the adoption of timelines, and other simplifying approaches were recommended as a solution.
The first task was centered around getting the user’s first impression of Flux Factory – what kind of an organization it is, what it offers, etc. Here we found no immediate understanding from the majority of the users on what Flux Factory is at first glance. Many users’ impulse is to scroll down from the home page (Figure 1.1) to see if they can find more information. Still, there is no additional information about the organization there.
It took several minutes until users could read all the info and understand what they offered. Also, the user had to navigate various website sections, including the “Artist-in-Residency” page and “Public Programs” page. During this task, other design issues also arose. For example, one user couldn’t see the Flux Factory logo because it was too small:
(Figure 1.2) Another user mentioned that the logo goes unnoticed when it should be what attracts the most attention to have the first image.
Current projects and Upcoming Public Events were not the first items expected when entering the website. Users couldn’t understand the relationship between the picture and the title of Current Projects. This feature wasn’t welcoming and had no relevant information for the user to understand what Flux Factory was.
(Figure 1.3) We also found problems in the information architecture of sections users navigated to understand Flux Factory: About > Mission and History Artists in Residency > About Residency Public Programs > Calendar (With no information)
On the homepage, there should be a one-sentence introduction of Flux Factory with the headline “What is Flux Factory” to grab users’ attention, preferably accompanied by a visible logo and secondary information, including “Current Projects” and “Upcoming Events.” (Figure 1.4)
This will simplify navigation for the user, which is vital to achieving engagement with the content. The Mission & History section should be complementary. The recommendation in this section is to make the text concise followed by relevant pictures giving a breath to the design (Figure 1.5)
The recommendation for information architecture is to have concise menus. A menu should be expanded in the different sections instead of taking you to a new page. If the user clicks Artist-in-Residency, it is the same as clicking About Residency.
(Figure 1.6) This inconsistency happens with the five sections within the web page. To solve this, rethink the menus so that the information is not repetitive. On the other hand, the logo has to be a relevant icon on the main page where it could be enlarged and placed in a place where it is visible at first sight.
For most users, the “Support” page (Figure 2.1) is not where they first looked to find information on donations. This is mainly because the term “support” is misleading: many users thought it meant “Customer Support” instead of donations to the Flux Factory organization.
When one is on the “Support” page, though, several things could still be optimized for a better user experience. Like many of the website’s other pages (e.g., About > Mission & History), this page suffers – counter-intuitively – from having too much text and information to be helpful to the user. Users complained about the page “looking cluttered,” them “having to scroll to the bottom to make a custom-amount donation,” and not knowing the exact purpose of the donation.
To improve the readability and design of the website, it’s recommended that the navigation architecture be changed slightly first. Instead of saying “Support,” it’s recommended to change this heading into “Support Us”, which clarifies the purpose of the button and bypasses the problem of users being lost and having to resort to “Contact Us.”
On the donation page itself, several things could also be modified:
Move the entire donation section up to the top of the page and delete the slideshow (see image to the right, as the information in the donation section about Flux IV is already sufficient.
For donations going to the launch of Flux IV, a separate option could be put underneath or above the main donation section based on its priority status. Simple, clarifying text like “Donate to Flux Factory” and “Support Flux Factory’s New Venue: Flux IV” could be added as well.
Check the Figure 2.3 and Figure 2.4 on the left for recommendation mockup.
The third task was to find information on how to participate in the artist program as an artist. We encountered a few findings that users suffered while completing the task. First of all, for the users, it takes time to understand what kind of programs a Flux Factory offers to the artists because there was confusion between finding it on the ‘Artist-in-Residency’ page and the ‘Public programs page.’
(Figure 3.1) The top two navigation bars are not very helpful in reaching their needs, and even more, users assumed that the option would be on the ‘Support’ page and searched for it there.
Moreover, users didn’t understand why “Public Programs” showed a calendar (Figure 3.2) Even though users clicked the calendar, there was no information about the programs. The user needs to click on other information one by one to get the details. This repetitive process made users feel lost.
The following finding was users had to use “Contact Us” because Flux Factory doesn’t currently receive applications and their Instagram accounts had no information. Users wanted to get more information and connect to the real world, but there was no option to make the connection.
The first recommendation in this section is to capture the user’s concentration with “What Flux Factory offers for the artist about the artist programs” in more visible and specific information. Providing information directly to the user is essential to serve what the assistance offers. This suggestion should be placed on the first page when the user clicks the public program. (Figure 3.4)
Another recommendation is to show forthcoming events on the same page of the calendar. (Design Mock-up) This change helps the user capture what kinds of events Flux Factory offers without any additional clicking at a glance. Lastly, the website can add the button for the submission resume, which helps the users notice how to join the program opportunity without confusion (Figure 3.5)
The recommendations were helpful to the Flux Factory website. We presented our findings in front of the class to the executive director of Flux Factory. The director responded very positively to our findings and thought they were very valuable in helping him improve upon the website. The website itself was a newer one therefore there still seemed to be fundamental issues, we spent time after the presentation discussing this in detail.
Overall, the website has a few usability issues that could be easily improved by by our recommendations provided above. There is no greater joy than the client agreeing to your suggestions and wanting to implement them hence making this usability study a successful one. Through this project, I was able to develop the ability to analyze data gathered from usability studies and transform them into actionable recommendations.
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