Yale's Map of Life (MOL) Usability Audit
The Map of Life (MOL) is a web-based biodiversity platform that uses geospatial data from various accredited data sets and interactive maps to visualize species distributions, helping researchers and policymakers identify conservation priorities. I worked with MOL stakeholders, along with a team of fellow SI master's students in SI 622 to conduct a comprehensive usability audit of the platform.
Ann Arbor, MI
SI 622 Needs Assessment and Usability Evaluation
Client Liason, UX Researcher
Biodiversity and Conservationism
5 Months
Challenge
In recent years, the Map of Life has steadily added features to serve an increasingly diverse and growing user base, including educators, policy makers, and conservationists. Yale's Map of Life developers enlisted our team of UX researchers to assess the functionality of these tools and ensure usability and the user experience is streamlined throughout the platform. In addition, I served as the team's client liaison, facilitated communication with Yale and running our weekly stand-ups.
Results
Our team delivered a holistic usability audit, including an interaction map, user interview reports with industry experts, personas, heuristics evaluations, and a usability comprehensive usability test.
We uncovered 4 key areas of improvement for the Map of Life:
An Unintuitive Navigation Scheme
UI Inconsistencies
Inaccessible Help Documentation
Poor Visual Appeal
5
Initial User Interviews
5
User Tests
5
Competitor Audits
Project Process
Interaction Map
To familiarize ourselves with the Map of Life platform our team constructed an interaction map based on the 5 main user flows:
Species: Allows users to jump directly into using the Map of Life using species search functionality.
Regions: Where users can access geospatial biodiversity data from specified regions via search.
Indicators: Allows users to examine species and country data based on biodiversity data indicators.
Patterns: Where users can view species biodiversity data using specified projection and biodiversity patterns.
Datasets: Where users can view species geospatial data using sets of datasets at once.
Interaction Map Takeaways
Poor Navigational Hierarchy: The universal navigation bar is not consistent with home page, and sub-nav bars are mis aligned.
Dead-End User Paths: In certain flows on the MOL database, the path ends and the user must manually click back to prior screens.
Broken Links: Some footer links were not responsive.
UI Writing Inconsistencies: Buttons are not styled in an intuitive manner and contain some language inconsistencies across different page flows.
Remote
5 Participants
Timeframe
10 Days
Moderated
Interviewer, Scribe
User Interviews
We conducted 5 moderated user interviews with Map of Life users from a diverse set of backgrounds, including conservationist, non-profit director, biodiversity educator, policy data manager, and researcher. We created a script of 14 questions covering broad domain workflows and specific Map of Life functionality.
Each interview was moderated by 2 team members; a interviewer and a scribe to take notes. We rotated these through these roles accordingly. To recruit interviewees, we were given a list from our client of 20 individuals, and filled our interview slots on a first come, first serve basis.
User Interview Takeaways
From our user interviews we gained the following insights:
Data Use: User primarily use Map of Life to visualize specific species data sets, some users have noted gaps in data presented in the Map of Life without notations.
Limited User Exploration: primarily use the Species and Regions pages and rarely use the other included sections on the home page.
Visualization: For all interviewees, data visualization was a major concern of theirs. While they appreciate the Map of Life's robust visualization tools, they note its slow performance and poor styling.
Interview Affinity Map Sample
User Personas
Survey Framework
To further contextualize our interview findings, our team ideated and created a Qualtrics survey, along with a roadmap for implementation:
Survey Audience: The survey is aimed at biodiversity professionals, the main user group of the Map of Life, and we wanted to target 2 audience demographics in this survey; veteran MOL users and new MOL users. These 2 audience are reflected in our survey branches.
Survey Questions: We separated our survey questions into 2 main sections; general questions and MOL questions. The general questions included questions on the user's background and general workflow processes working in biodiversity. The MOL questions consisted of open-ended questions relating to the user's specific MOL use cases and split logic question based on the user's experience with the platform.
Pilot Survey: We conducted a pilot survey on 5 users to collect feedback on the overall logic and flow of the survey and adjusted accordingly.
Survey Recruitment: We proposed the Survey to be sent out to registered MOL users via email, along with associated interest lists for biodiversity groups. To adequately capture both new and veteran users, we recommended a quota sampling methodology with 2/3 of the total surveyed group being veteran users.
Bias Risk: Our survey may create a response bias from existing, veteran users. To mitigate this we recommend a quota sampling methodology to ensure at least 1/3 of users are new MOL users.
Competitive Audit
We conducted a competitive audit of platforms similar to the Map of Life that we discovered either through recommendation or direct reference in our User Interviews. We evaluated the competitors using the following criteria, developed based on our user interviews and stakeholder meetings:
Usability: Navigation, Language Accessibility, Responsiveness
Content: User Content, Species Prioritization
Visuals: Photographs, Overall Aesthetic
Data Visualization: Types of Visualization, Legibility & Consistency, Granularity, Data Limitations & Accuracy
Competitive Audit Matrix Sample
Remote
5 Participants
Timeframe
10 Days
Semi-Moderated
Interviewer, Scribe
User Testing
We conducted 5 semi-moderated user tests from a list of Map of Life users from a diverse set of backgrounds and levels of experience with the platform.
Each test was moderated by 2 team members; a interviewer and a scribe to take notes. We rotated these through these roles accordingly.
We assembled a list of 7 key tasks that, based on our prior research, felt accurately accounted for typical use cases and major product functionality.
User Testing Metrics & Scoring
We sub-divided our key tasks into sub-tasks and tracked the following for both the overall key task and individual sub-tasks:
Completion (Yes, No, Partial)
Time to Task
Error Number
Qualitative Observations
Our team recorded each participant's metrics and aggregated them to determine average time to task, completion rate, and error number. We assigned each criteria bucket a score of 0, 0.5, and 1 for non completion, partial completion and full completion, respectively. From there we calculated the average success rate for each task and sub-task.
User Test Takeaways
60%
Completion Rate for Global Indicators Task
40%
Completion Rate for Support Documentation Task
2:06
Average Time to Complete Custom Region Drill Down Task
Limited Access to Help Documentation: Help and FAQ documentation is hidden and, at times, not accessible for the users.
Interface Inconsistencies: While users were familiar with the Species search functionality, they were unfamiliar with the global indicators and patterns flows, despite having the same functionality.
Navigational Issues: Some users struggled to find specific sections within the aforementioned unfamiliar flows and some failed to drill down appropriately.
Conclusion
We conducted a competitive audit of platforms similar to the Map of Life that we discovered either through recommendation or direct reference in our User Interviews. We evaluated the competitors using the following criteria, developed based on our user interviews and stakeholder meetings:
Usability: Navigation, Language Accessibility, Responsiveness
Content: User Content, Species Prioritization
Visuals: Photographs, Overall Aesthetic
Data Visualization: Types of Visualization, Legibility & Consistency, Granularity, Data Limitations & Accuracy
Lessons Learned
Balance Simplicity with Sophistication: The Map of Life is an incredibly powerful and comprehensive GIS system. While slow load times may be a necessary evil in retrieving data, we discovered ways to (1) simplify the user flow and (2) make information consumption simpler and more readily available.
Understand Diverse User Education Levels: It was important for us to check our own biases for how user leverage the Map of Life, particularly in our user tests. We didn't expect the help documentation task to be a major issue for users, but it became one of the most decisive tasks in our user tests.