Vi-Anh Nguyen

Rouyn Noranda Case Study

Rouyn Noranda is a little town in the north of Canada. They only updates their town website recently to promote more tourism. However, I along with my collaborator, felt we could go further with it. This case study is to highlight how we went about developing and researching to create effective UX.

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Project Proposal Draft

Visit Rouyn Noranda!

🍁Rouyn-Noranda Welcomes You🍁

• Group 2
• Vi-Linh Nguyen
• Vi-Anh Nguyen

Project Overview

Rouyn-Noranda is a small town in Northern Quebec in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, with a population of over 42 000 people. This project will look at the way information is organized for non-locals, who know less about the town, vs locals, who tend to know more. The website caters more towards established locals because of how information centered around already living there is concentrated in a smaller number of clearly labeled areas. Our goal is to reconfigure the navigation to make it easier and more efficient for non-locals, be it tourists or newcomers, to access the information they need about the town.

Content Descriptions

Information presented on the homepage shows five categories. We will be focusing on the English version of the website.

Usage Scenarios

• Looking for things to do in town
• Look for resources for moving to town
• Look and see what it's like to live there
• • Which could include such scenarios:
  • • Look at schools there
    • Looking for job opportunities

User Descriptions

• Tourists who want to visit
• Newcomers who want to move to area (for job opportunity)
• Locals who want to get more involved in town
• Student who wants to study there
• An older worker who wants to retire there

Research Methods

• Content Inventory
• Open Card Sorting
• IA Testing
• Closed Card Sorting
• Usability Testing

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Content Inventory

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Final Report

Personas

• Persona 1: Ron. The new graduate who wants to start life in a small town.

• Persona 2: Janine. The tourist who wants to get to know rural Canada.

Scenarios

• Scenario 1: You found a town to have a new start in.

• Scenario 2: You are visiting rural Canada for the first time.

• Scenario 3: You are looking for work in Rouyn-Noranda.

Testing Process

Our group proceeded to lay out the website's information architecture into a content inventory, using each component of the main navigation, there was a total of 113 content items.

Purpose

The inventory would help the group understand the main components of the website and evaluate a more efficient organizational scheme for the user.

What we learned

There were too many links in the website's main navigation. Certain pages contained links that lead to other parts of the navigation. The existing category names were unclear at what information they presented based on the user scenario possibilities. Localization added to the ambiguity of the naming conventions of the navigation.

Card Sorts

From the initial content inventory, areas of opportunity to reorganize were found. Three card sorts were conducted: Open card sort, closed card sort, and another closed card sort for validation purposes. Our group used OptimalSort to conduct the card sort testings. Participants were recruited by family, friends and social media connections. The following sections are the results and changes.

Round 1: Open

There were 2 parcipants for the first card sort as a pilot card sort, with 3 iterations per participant. This was an open card sort.

Results

Round 2: Closed

There were 6 participants for the second card sort. This was a closed card sort.

Results

Needed Changes?

Round 3: Closed, validation

This closed card sort serves to validate the result of the second round of card sorts.