Website Redesign: Kitt Peak National Observatory
Introduction
“The Mountain” is what the instructors and other UX/UI alumni subtly call Project 3. The website redesign challenge. How hard could it be?
As it turns out, very.
I could spend the next 10 minutes of your time explaining the complexities of of the two exercises we were tasked with in the first week of P3 but I’m going to get right into the second week which consisted of redesigning a website utilizing the tools we learned in the first week. The only information you need to from week one is that we were tasked with doing a partial website redesign for an observatory website that has not been modified since 1998. Yes, 1998. Yerkes Observatory is the culprit in question and given my lifelong love of astronomy, this was the first time I genuinely despised it.
Kitt Peak National Observatory
Before we knew anything about the project, we were instructed to pick a number out of a bowl. There were only 4 numbers you could get- 1,2,3,4. Once we learned about the four options, there was a clear winner and loser to which each student wanted. The Wave, a natural rock formation in Arizona, was the most attractive and Kitt Peak Observatory, ugh another observatory, was the least. Given my luck with getting the client I wanted in P2(Venmo), I knew I was going to get stuck with Kitt Peak.
Kitt Peak National Observatory, located in the Arizona-Sonoran region near Tuscan, AZ, has the largest and most diverse collection of astronomical instruments in the northern hemisphere, with 22 optical and 2 radio telescopes. Which is pretty cool but more importantly, the website was not as bad at Yerkes. I had a slight feeling of relief looking over the website and realizing it wasn’t going to be as much work as I had anticipated.
Step One: Heuristic and Competitive Analysis
Having never have practiced either of these tools, for some reason, I wasn’t really confident I knew what I was doing. I started with the Heuristic Analysis and started dissecting the site based on whether it was findable, accessable, clear, cumulative, useful, credible, controlable, valuable, learnable, delightful. This is called the Abby Method. Its not hard to figure out that Kitt Peaks website doesn’t do a good job of any of those. Its reservation process is archaic making it not credible, valuable, useful, or enjoyable. The home page has its main navigation in a hamburger menu… I mean, why? Its a desktop website, why are using a hamburger icon for desktop? Moving on. The information on programs and the observatory itself is not organized and shows up in multiple places in the main navigation. So yeah, the website had issues.
Next, I looked at some competitors and comparators for analysis. Starting with looking other observatories — Maunakea, W.M. Keck, and McDonald Observatories. As well as comparators like The Met, MoMa, and Guggenheim. I compared things like if they offer to buy tickets online, have a search bar, and if they offer programs and events. I also looked at their main navigation organization to help guide me on to organize Kitt Peaks. To round off the analysis I made a Competitive Matrix chart which confirmed the insight that one of Kitt Peaks most attractable traits is the amount of programs and events they hold.
Card Sorting and Tree Testing
Once again I was able to recruit some family members and friends to complete a card sorting exercise for me. Using only the content I wanted to keep for the redesign, I had 5 participants organize the cards into 5 main navigation themes that I gave them — About Us, Visit Us, Programs, Reservations, and Support. At the end of the 5 users completing the card sort I had enough clear themes in each category that I moved on to Tree Testing.
The Tree Test is to confirm that the results of the Card Sort make sense for the main navigation organization. A total of 10 tasks were given to 4 users, which again were completed by family and friends. All tasks except for 3,7,8 were directly completed by most users, I’ve outlined the problem task below:
Task # 3: You are traveling to Kitt Peak Observatory with a person who has a disability, find information on whether the observatory is wheelchair accessible. 25% completion rate.
Solution: Move accessibility into Visit Us
Task # 7:You are going on a class trip to Kitt Peak next week, look up if Kitt Peak has special pricing for large groups. 50% completion rate
Solution: move Group Pricing into General Information
Task # 8:You are thinking of visiting Kitt Peak but want to read what other people say about it, find travel reviews. 50% completion rate.
Solution: Move travel reviews into Visit Us
Once I had my results from tree testing I made the new sitemap of the redesign to get a better look at the structure and organization of the navigation. From there I created a navigation study of the main navigation and sub navigation. The navigation study made wire framing for the prototypes easier as well.
Usability Testing
By the time I finished my wireframes it was Tuesday, the presentation being on Friday, I started to feel the pressure to make sure I complete everything. I wanted to give myself enough time to make the presentation and actually practice it. I started on Monday night with doing a test on my boyfriend. I got to school early the following morning to start bugging my classmates to take tests for me as well. I quickly got all 3 remaining test done by 10am, impressive.
- Go to the Kitt Peak website and look at some images of the telescope and grounds.
- Go to the Kitt Peak website and check to see if the Visitor Center is wheelchair accessible
- Make a reservation for the Nightly Observatory Program for October 9th
- Cancel your reservation
Usability Tests Round One and Two Solutions
Both of the usability tests went well for the most part. There weren’t any major changes to be made after each one so I’ll focus on a couple changes I made. In the first test people were confused on where to find the image gallery which I had placed in About Us based on my best judgment. After realizing people wanted to go into Visit Us first, I decided to make that change for Round Two. One issues that came up in both Round One and Round Two, was where to find accessibility information. The task was a bit leading with asking to find accessibility information about the Visitor Center but there still was confusion. One user even went down to the footer to try and find more information. When I asked why, they said that they had seen accessibility be provided in the footer of websites. So I added a link into the footer for good practice.
Presentation
I almost stuck to my plan of having all of Thursday to work on my presentation but the 12 hour work days of the project caught up with me by then. Feeling extremely lethargic I worked on my wireframes for 4 hours Thursday morning, something I only gave myself 2 hours for. Then my procrastination finally kicked in, I just didn’t feel like making the presentation. I got about 50% through by 6pm that night. I went home and complained to my boyfriend who did his best to motivate me to just finish it! I did. By 10:30pm. Now I knew I should have ran through it a couple times to make sure I kept it under 10 minutes but sleep. Sleeeeeeeeep. I wanted to go to sleep. So I did!
I leave this article on a positive note, the presentation went much better than anticipated! Success and now I’m over the UX/UI hill with only 5 weeks left.
