Problem
Courthouse Libraries BC had received feedback from settlement workers that the information on their site, Clicklaw, was hard to find for their clients. Clicklaw is a portal that connects British Columbians with legal information from trusted organizations, education about legal issues, and legal help services they can contact.
They approached us to conduct usability testing on their site focusing on settlement workers, their clients (mainly new immigrants to BC), and the general public to try to uncover what some of the root causes were for the findability issues.
Approach
We designed seven tasks for users to accomplish during the usability test using the live Clicklaw website. These tasks centred around the findability of services and resources using navigation, search and filtering controls, and HelpMap (a focused search that surfaces service locations on a map as part of search results).
Clicklaw search results filtering
We structured our tasks around topics that are commonly searched for on the site and picked resources and services that could be provided in specific languages to provide more realistic scenarios to new immigrants.
Results
We identified a list of usability issues of varying severity that needed attention and presented the findings to Courthouse Libraries BC. These included recommended changes to the layout and design of the search filters and of each individual search result. Our client then prioritized the issues and we worked together to plan future design engagements to address each issue in turn.
We have been working together to design solutions to improve their website and our client has been happy with their effectiveness.
Wireframes for improving the Clicklaw search results filtering