Situated in vibrant Fitzroy, just north of Melbourne, Australia, Carter Digital is a user experience and innovation agency. By leveraging design thinking and user research, they deliver elegant solutions to the most complex of problems.
Since opening in 2004, they have grown from a team of two to over 30, speak 19 languages, and come from more than eleven countries. It’s these differences in culture that have helped them create thoughtful, human-centered experiences and earned them a plethora of awards, including Asia Pacific’s top innovative and most influential independent experience agency.
With an end-to-end in-house team, the experience team is one of the largest groups within the agency. User research plays an integral part in their design process and ensures decisions are always informed by a clear understanding of their audience.
At any given time, the experience team will be engaged in a range of research activities including remote user-testing, in-person interviews, and in situ observation; the best results often coming from a combination of these methodologies. For the purposes of remote usability testing, the team uses UsabilityHub in tandem with other UX and usability platforms.
For Carter Digital founder James Noble, the value of usability testing is clear. “The ability for something as simple as a five-second test helps discover things you may not usually uncover in conversation, which makes it immediately worthwhile.”
Usability testing is crucial and perfect in trying to help solve problems before they occur
Challenge
Carter Digital undertook a significant digital transformation project with the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV), aiming to improve the entire digital experience of this well-known Australian brand.
More than just a refresh, the new design had to ensure that information was more easily discoverable, a scalable framework by which to expand services and greatly improve lines of communication with existing and new audiences – a task that would require a strong understanding of users’ needs and wants.
Solution
There was a clear choice in tools needed to achieve the goal of creating a user-centric design. “We use UsabilityHub a lot as there was a lot of analyzing, and re-testing variations involving the whole digital assets,” shared James.
“Testing was for the audience and ourselves so we could base decisions on fact, not opinion. We couldn’t afford mistakes and had to make sure the outcome was right the first time.”
In one example, the team used first click tests to discover how long users were taking to find the emergency contact information for roadside assistance.
Result
Results from these tests showed that while most users managed to find the correct information, they spent an average of 19.6 seconds looking for it. This gave Carter Digital a starting benchmark which they could measure improvements against.
Several iterations and rounds of testing produced the final design below. This revised layout not only increased the success rate of finding key information, but brought average time taken down to 4.9 seconds; a whopping 75% improvement on the initial benchmark.
RACV are the perfect client, they give us the flexibility to in-depth research testing, removing opinion and helping us find the best possible outcomes.
James and the Carter Digital team are firm believers in the value of user research and the importance of utilizing user testing and feedback to create a successful digital presence.
If you’d like to see how UsabilityHub can help your business, reach out to us at sales@usabilityhub.com.
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