Case Study
February 2019 – April 2019

My Role: UX Researcher, UI Designer

Introduction

On the internet, there’s a neat little website called Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD for short) that posts an astronomy related photo every day, along with a short blurb written by a professional astronomer. It contains the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the internet and has been the passion project of Michigan Technological University and NASA astronomers, Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell respectively, since 1995. 

The site design is, noticeably, reminiscent of 90’s HTML sites. However, out-of-date site design does not always equate to poor usability. The purpose of this project was to determine if current site design causes issues with usability and, if so, can the design be updated to better match modern user sensibilities without compromising on the initial intent of the site?

Interviews

I first conducted interviews with 4 self-proclaimed “amateur astronomers” in order to determine the expectations of the websites target audience, and to validate if the concept of the site meets those expectations.

link to full readout

Usability Tests

I then conducted usability testing with 3 participants who had never used the site to determine if primary task flows in the site are intuitive to new users.

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Survey

Then, using the site’s own forum, I surveyed 6 current, frequent users (those who used the site at least once a week) to verify whether or not frequent users have similar issues with the site as I observed in new users.

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Users and potential users like concept of the website

New users show positive sentiments about the images on the website and frequent users visit it daily. Self-reported amateur astronomers prefer to learn more about theory and current research than just look at interesting images.

Suggestions
Continue with basic concepts and function of website.

“Oh, that’s so cool! If I had figured out how to get [to the tasked picture] I think would have liked it a lot better.”

- Tyler (26), while doing a usability test

Participants skip over large strings of text

On pages with long lines of text, participants would miss key functions or modules they were tasked to find. Participants often had difficulty finding the navigation bar below the image descriptions and did not notice key instructions on the site (i.e. how to filter searches).

Design Solution
Condense copy; do not have text sprawled across entire screen. Move important functions (i.e. the navigation bar) to the top of the page.

Search is highly used but difficult for users to use

Participants are most likely to use the Search page to look for archived photos regardless of information they are searching for. However, new users felt overwhelmed by the number of search results a single search would produce and desired for filtering options and 3/6 frequent users agreed with the statement, “The filtering in the search function is difficult and not intuitive to use.”

Design Solution
Include search bar and instructions to top of search returns page. Consider adding drop-down filters for commonly filtered categories. Also consider working with SEO to build a more intuitive search function for the users.

Users feel Archive/Discover the Cosmos! page should be more visually focused

In usability tests, participants expected the Archive/Discover the Cosmos! to include photos and would express words of disappointment when directed to a page with just a list of hyperlinks. Additionally, all participants in these usability tests felt that the website should be more visually focused overall. When surveyed, while 5/6 frequent users had no issue with the overall site design, 4/6 agreed with the statement “The Archived/Discover the Cosmos! page should be more visually focused.”

Design Solution
Consider a shift towards a less text heavy, and more visually focused site. Include image previews in the Archive/Discover the Cosmos! page.

Frequent users report primarily using the site to view the current picture of the day

All survey participants report primarily using the site to view Today’s Picture but only half of survey participants report primarily using more than one page on the site. Of those half no participant reported visiting primary search and discovery pages (Archive, Search, Calendar).

Suggestion
Further testing. Conduct further testing, targeting frequent users, to understand:

• Why do frequent users report not utilizing other pages on the site?

• What are these pages being used for?

• Do users know what these other pages are for?

— Suggested APOD Website Redesign —

Created using Adobe Illustrator
Original site: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Usability Changes
Copy was condensed and navigation functions were put either at the top of the page or away from large sections of copy to increase discoverability.

Design Changes
Information from below was moved next to the image to give the information equal weight to the image. Backdrop was changed to black to give an illusion of viewing the image on a dark night.

Usability Changes
Image previews were used instead of hyperlinks to better align with user’s expectations.

Design
Image previews were arranged in straight rows of 5 to keep with the orderly organization of the original.

Usability Changes
Copy was reduced and restructured to a simple form and call to action to reduce cognitive load.

Next Steps

Following the design of the high fidelity mock-ups, the next steps would be to do another round of usability tests on new and frequent users of the redesigned site. The purpose of testing the new designs on new users is to validate if the design changes indeed improve the usability, while testing frequent users would determine if there are any aspects of the redesign that affect usability for already established users.