UX Research

NYC

Guest Management Portal, UX Audit

Overview of a UX audit for a hospitality and event management platform — personas, competitive evaluation, and heuristic evaluation.

Role:
UX Research and Design
Company:
DOOR3
Area:
Business Consulting
Duration:
6-10 weeks
decorative image for Guest Audit

Client Profile

hospitality and event management

New York-based client focused on high-touch events.

The client used their platform to create unique guest and travel experiences for large, and semi-exclusive events, and private corporate experiences.

Arial photo of NYC

New York

Agency Profile

Small digital consultancy delivering web services for small and medium businesses. Specialized in intranets and business applications. This was one of a few projects with DOOR3.

Based in NYC with an office in Ukraine. Clients in the US and abroad.

Project Overview

Applying user experience research methods.

Problem
A new client of DOOR3 had engaged them to provide UX and engineering services.
Task
I would be conducing a UX Audit to evaluate and recommend solutions for the client’s guest management platform. Following the audit, I would apply the findings to update the design.
Research Strategy
The project included three phases of research: interviews and personas, a competitive review, and a heuristic evaluation.
Presentation
During the presentation, I prioritized the most critical usability issues and emphasized productivity gains for their internal users.

UX Audit

Due to availability, I had at least 6-10 weeks to conduct an audit. During this time I developed 6 personas, identified over 20 competitors, and flagged more than 75 usability issues.

Personas

To complete personas, I conducted interviews with stakeholders to understand roles, goals, and tasks. I also read job descriptions for some of clients they worked with, such as an event manager or director of development.

3 Key Findings

I learned three key pieces of information that affected the user experience:

  • Roles and permissions restricted user functionality
  • The core user group was internal; not really used by clients.
  • The platform required extensive training
Replications of internal personas

Internal Actors represent direct users.

Replications of external personas

External Actors represent secondary users.

Note: Images are replicated originals.

Competitive Review

I identified at least 20 competitors and related industries, to gain knowledge of industry conventions and identify potentially useful features.

Findings were organized into 4 categories, such as platform-specific features, or design and information architecture.

Screencaptures of competitors Planning Pod and Eventbrite

Competitors Planning Pod and Eventbrite

Heuristic Evaluation

The heuristic evaluation was framed around Jakob Nielsen’s 10 principles for interaction design.

I identified more than 70 issues. While many were not critical, the cumulative amount was a concern. For the client presentation, I prioritized the most critical.

Many issues had to do with inconsistent use of UI elements, navigation, or labels. For each issue, I included a suggested fix.

Screen shot of Nielsen-Norman Group website

10 web usability heuristics from Jakob Nielsen