Performing Arts Supply UX Research Project

Problem

Performing Arts Supply’s website design and features have not kept up with modern user expectations, resulting in high single-page abandonment rates and low expectations of the ‘mom and pop’ website.

Solution

Develop a fresh, mobile-friendly design that invites users to search for costumes and makes it easy for them to book either an individual fitting or an ensemble fitting.

Research Methods

Competitive analysis, freeform stakeholder interviews, card sort, usability testing

My Role

Researcher, wireframe development

Deliverables

I delivered a research report along with a set of wireframes designed with a UI that addresses key points of confusion and prototyped the most common use case. These wireframes follow the path users expected to see during usability testing: home > search > find > learn > book fitting.

The Background

To practice my craft, I decided to redesign an ailing website. I conducted a competitive analysis, created personas, ran a card sort, reviewed the current site’s heuristics and ran a usability study. After analyzing the data, developed a new mobile-friendly interface and a prototype showcases the primary user flow – search for a costume, then book a fitting.

Why Performing Arts Supply?

I selected Performing Arts Supply because I know about theater and I was confident that I could develop tangible solutions. Also, I'm friends with the owner and I thought it would be nice to do for her.

Research Plan

I developed a comprehensive research plan but only had time to execute the competitive analysis, personas, card sort, heuristic analysis and user testing. 

Feel free to peruse my unused research instruments.

In-Depth Interview

Online Survey

Diary Study

Competitive Analysis 

Performing Arts Supply’s main competition is Techland Houston and is the primary focus of the competitive analysis. Techland Houston takes a, ‘we’ll throw everything we have and the kitchen sink at you’ approach to website design. However, they excel at looking up to date. Their site is responsive and their graphics are high quality.

See complete competitive analysis and site selection info.

Techland Mobile View

Performing Arts Supply Mobile View

Personas

Not having great access to users or data, I created three personas then ran them by Performing Arts Supply’s owner, Stacey and Lisa, a stitcher in the shop.

I had this one persona – the Common Sense Costumer.

She was the costume manager at the Houston Grand Opera. Her name was Bethany and she worked with artistic directors and professional opera singers. She worried about things like hoop steel and how royal blue satin looked from the nosebleed section of the house. (My imagine is endless.)

I ran this persona and the others scenarios by Lisa, a young woman in Stacey’s shop.

My Common Sense Costumer was a Fantasy

Lisa listened to my postulations and tried to mold her answers to match the reality I’d spun out of thin air. She grasped for brief moments from her own experience that fit my narrative. It didn’t take long for me to read her body language and realize how dead wrong I’d been. I immediately unwound the damage. I took responsibility for my ignorance and entreated her share the truth with me.

Who were Lisa's customers? What problems did they have?

Common Sense Costumer does exist but she is a rarity. Professional theatrical companies usually have their own costume shops and come to places like Performing Arts Supply for backup help.

Bethany morphed into No Nonsense Director. She is the type of customer that comes in more often. Bethany is a high school teacher who puts on a big musical in the fall and a UIL play in the spring. Bethany is a jack of all trades and employs a herd of parent volunteers to get kids stage-ready.

Meet No Nonsense Director Bethany.

After discussing my other two personas with Stacey, I tweaked Bethany’s fellow personas – Fred the Facilities Guy and Costume Party Carrie.

On to the Card Sort and my Dendrogram

Cards Sorted

47 Cards Used

Correct syntax. Sexy, right?

I should have known when I had to borrow my husband’s PC because the SynCaps software that helps build dendrograms wasn't available on a Mac that I was going to be in trouble. I really wanted a jazzy dendrogram.

So I took the plunge. I downloaded the software to his machine, documented all my findings in the syntax above, loaded the file and immediately got an error. After a few tweaks to the data, I figured out that I didn’t have the right syntax. SynCaps is free and the documentation is  about how to use it is lacking. After much research on the SynCaps website, I learned that one can export the results of an open card sort conducted in OptimalSort in the SynCaps syntax. That was all well and good but OptimalSort’s free version only allows up to 30 cards.

My card sort was done with 47 cards.

Since all I needed was to export the correct syntax, so I opened an OptimalSort account, created a 30-card study, shuffled some cards, labeled them and exported the results.

Alas, I had the correct syntax. Sexy, right?

I changed my data so it was in the right format for Syncaps and loaded it onto my husband’s PC. I finally had my dendrogram.

Sadly, the dendrogram failed to tell the story. 

I mean. It’s okay. But the item grouping is much easier to interpret. I think it’s the color-coding. The dark blue areas say, “There’s a lot of agreement about this.” Whereas, the light blue areas say, “Not so much. We need to do more digging to figure this out.”

So I learned to pronounce dendrogram, write appropriate syntax for SynCaps and that Performing Arts Supply could do something amazing with the information architecture for the business side of theater.

Disappointing Dendrogram

Promising Item Grouping

Finally, the Usability Testing

In the three sessions (S1, S2, S3) I conducted for the Performing Art Supply company, all of the users were asked to do the following:

Task One: Find a Costume You Want

S1 said she’d dress in something from the Regency period. When we got to that gallery of pictures, the only costume that looked like it would fit her was for an old matron.

On the positive side, the homepage gave S1 enough context clues to believe that she might find something.

By contrast, when S2 said she wanted to be a turtle, I knew I was in trouble. She was already turned off by the dated look and feel of the site. It’s design gave no indication that they offered anything but period costumes. There was no way S2 would have gone past the first page if she wasn’t participating in the study. My concern increased when S3 said he wanted to be a shark and, based on what’s showcased on the site, he didn’t believe they’d have a costume for him.

I don’t know if Performing Art Supply offers turtle or shark costumes, but they definitely branch beyond the skinny medieval tavern wench crowd. Regardless of the costume desired, all participants said they’d expect to see the following details about a costume:

performing-arts-supply-wireframes.pdf

Task 2: Book a Fitting

As I progressed from one usability session to the next, I realized that the users wanted all their micro-interactions on a single page.

Imagining the experience from their point of view, they search, find, learn, then…what? They are renting a costume so they don’t want to buy it, but they do want to try it on.

Right now booking a fitting is separate from viewing the costume which brings me to task three.

I created wireframes that follow the path users expected to see during usability testing: home > search > find > learn > book fitting.

Task Three: Provide Your Measurements

The measurement sheet is in an entirely different part of the site than the other costume information. It took quite a bit of prompting for users to find. As the research went on, I realized that it was part of the user flow outlined earlier.

User Flow Steps

The users didn’t say it in those words. They don’t talk about user flows and micro-interactions. As a user experience professional, it is my job to pick up on those cues and create a unified experience.

Task 4: Addam’s Family Costumes

By this point, the users were proficient at finding the costumes. They didn’t like opening a PDF to get to the information they needed about plays and musicals, but they could do it. During this task, what I found most valuable was that S3 suggested making it easier for the user to request the costumes.

The usability testing revealed an underlying truth that I was unable to see because I’d already been biased by all I’d learned proceeding the testing. Which it why it is so vital to test with people who have intent but no knowledge of the actual site.

S3 described his solution in almost the same terms that a woman who works at Performing Art Supply used when I spoke to her many weeks earlier.

Task 5: Find Paint

This was the most straightforward task. The users didn’t make a single misstep.

They wanted the same type of information about these products as they did about the costumes. Description, cost, availability, etc. The idea of a shopping cart came up at this point.

What the users didn’t mention, but as a designer, I couldn’t get over was the fact that the paint cans are all different sizes and out of focus. I asked several questions about the quality of these pictures but the users weren’t nearly has hung up on it as me. I came to the conclusion that their expectations are low. They didn’t say, “my underlying assumption is that this is a small, mom-and-pop-shop, therefore my expectations are low.”

If they’d found pictures like that on Etsy or Amazon they’d think it was a joke or that one of those companies had been interfered with by the Russians. This is where the professional connects the dots. To marry user experience with industry expectations. And usability testing is one of the best ways to gather unique perspectives along with themes. All of which lead to a better design.

https://ajackc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/pas-usability-test-results-recommendations.pdf

Interesting Side Note

Through conversations with Performing Arts Supply’s owner, I learned that ‘responsive design’ means nothing to a lay person and just about everything can go wrong with stage curtains. That’s why the In-Depth interview describes responsive design as ‘phone-friendly’ and the online survey includes a bunch of questions about stage curtains.