Case Study #1 - IHA, Health Literacy Solutions Center
*NOTE: To protect the client’s data and information, I have opted to blur out the details, and use this as an opportunity to explain my approach to a research problem.
Summary
Project goal: Identify who the active and inactive users are of the IHA website and products (HLSC). Secondary goal was to identify pain points and points of opportunity by digging deeper into the wants and needs of active users.
Problem: We know little about the IHA population as a whole, but need to know in order to stay relevant to the active users needs.
Approach: Comprehensive hi-low approach using surveys and interviews to gather quantitative and qualitative data and analyze for trends and actionable insights.
Deliverables:
Detailed 71 page report identifying the active and inactive populations of users, graphs included, as well as actionable insights that directly address identified user pain points and wants.
Spreadsheet of survey results, with applied filters
Data visualization board, showcasing grouping trends
Project Background
CLIENT OVERVIEW
IHA (Institute for Healthcare Advancement), operates in the health literacy industry, serving professionals across various sectors, such as healthcare providers, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations. Their target audience consists of health literacy professionals who focus on improving health communication and education.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Obtain a comprehensive understanding of the IHA community, including active and inactive users, their demographics, and their perceptions of the HLSC.
Identify where health literacy professionals are currently obtaining their information and which sources they find most valuable.
Discover the common challenges and pain points users experience with the current HLSC website.
Determine what types of resources or features are missing from the HLSC that users would find valuable.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
IHA was facing the challenge of ensuring their Health Literacy Solutions Center (HLSC) remains relevant and effective in meeting the evolving needs of health literacy professionals. The business goals included understanding user demographics, identifying pain points in the current website experience, and determining which resources were most valued by users.
QUICK DEFINITIONS
What is the HLSC?
It is the website product of IHA (Institute for Healthcare Advancement)
Research Methodology
PROCESS OVERVIEW
Planning: Determined research objectives and identified target audiences for survey and interviews via collaboration on Google Drive.
Data collection: Conducted survey & user interviews via Survey Monkey and Zoom.
Analysis: Used a Miro board and e-sticky notes, merge data points and quotes from interviews to identify key trends, challenges, and user needs.
Synthesis: Developed actionable recommendations based on analysis, aimed at improving the HLSC user experience and addressing user pain points.
As part of a research team, we used a combination of surveys and user interviews to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. These methods were chosen to align with the project goals of understanding user demographics, identifying pain points, and gathering actionable insights for improving the HLSC.
The survey was distributed to approximately 15,000 members via Survey Monkey and the IHA mailing list, achieving 215 valid responses. (Spam and repeat submittals omitted)
Goal: Uncover general user interaction with HLSC with quantifiable data points.
Of those who qualified and volunteered from the survey, we interviewed 9 participants for an hour on Zoom, used Otter.ai for transcription, and Google Forms for organized note-taking.
Goal: Get in-depth, long-form responses so we can add more layers and nuance to the identity of the IHA active user.
Data Collection Phase Challenges
Short collection timespan. Given the speed of the project, we could only keep the survey open for a few weeks and quickly conduct the user interviews.
Total time: one month for both surveys and user interviews.
Initially received a large response from the survey, however upon close inspection, approximately 2/3 of responses were spam and/or duplicates.
Analysis, Synthesis & Visualization
Response to Challenges
Short collection timespan: Leave surveys open to collect while we book user interviews right away. We set a goal of gathering 10-12 and successfully booked, interviewed 9 individuals.
Export Survey Monkey results to Excel where the sorting function can be used to efficiently and quickly eliminate duplicate submissions. The remainder of the submissions could be carefully validated to eliminate the inclusion of bot/spam inputs.
Step 2
Organize e-stickies by the interviewee, and begin creating tags for emerging trends.
Tags to be kept in a legend for iteration and input from team members.
Step 3
Begin grouping by tags and merge tags into larger groups aka the trends.
Iterate and collaborate with team members to distill accuracy.
Step 4
Looking at the trends, begin to highlight which trends and insights have the most quantitative and qualitative weight (most e-stickies).
Goal is to distinguish the signal from the noise, a few actionable insights that will move the needle.
Key Findings?
To protect my clients privacy these details will be omitted. If you wish to see a case study where data and key findings are present in detail, please check out my case study for Boston Automation Software (click here).
Outcomes & Impact
CLIENT FEEDBACK
The stakeholders at IHA provided positive feedback on the clarity and actionable nature of the research findings, noting that the recommendations were directly aligned with their strategic goals.
Reflections & Learnings
The visualization board where interviews and survey results were compiled, grouped, and synthesized.
Step 1
Pull all relevant quotes from user interviews and put on e-stickies.
Put survey data on e-stickies.
Step 5
Clearly identify the actionable insights to prioritize and make recommendations for:
A.) more research
B.) solutions revealed by the research
C.) both a and c
RESULTS
The research directly contributed to a more user-friendly redesign of the HLSC, with improved navigation and search capabilities. Metrics such as user satisfaction and engagement with the HLSC are expected to improve as a result.
RESEARCH WORKLOAD BREAKDOWN, ETC.
On this project I worked as UX research support to the UX research lead
Total project time: 1.5 months
Where I collaborated: creating and editing user survey and interview questions, conducting user interviews, writing the full 71 page report
Where I contributed directly: verifying data quality, compiling and organizing data on Excel, analyzing and synthesizing data and interviews via board visualization, identify actionable insights and make recommendations
IDEAS FOR FUTURE IMPROVEMENT
In future projects, I will advocate to allot more time to participant recruitment to ensure an even more diverse and representative sample.
I may also consider multiple rounds of surveys or seek another way of getting the survey in front of the user in order to maximize survey engagement.
Let’s work together!
If you’re interested in how thorough and user-centered research can drive impactful design decisions, I invite you to contact me for similar projects.
Thank you for visiting.
WHAT I LEARNED
The project reinforced the importance of using a mixed-methods approach to capture both broad and deep insights. It also highlighted the value of aligning research methods with specific project goals to ensure actionable outcomes.
Getting quality data (like through a survey) is difficult and absolutely needs a keen eye to catch any outliers that do not belong to the data set.