From National to Local: Usability Testing Non-Profit Websites

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  • February 28, 2019
Creator
  • Riegel, Julie
    • Affiliation: School of Information and Library Science
Abstract
  • As people continue to access more information through the World Wide Web, providing effective websites has become increasingly important to the work of Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs). While the needs of individual NPOs will differ, working within industry standards helps build a bridge between NPOs and users regardless of familiarity with the organization’s website. Feedback from users is critical to improving the way a site functions. Though the process of retrieving information on the local affiliations of the larger organizations appears straightforward, this study supports the hypothesis that the user’s journey is actually more complicated. In order to assess how users engage with each website, the researcher designed a sequence of usability tests that asked the users to find a specific piece of information on the local chapter for the following organizations: Girl Scouts of America, Youthbuild (a trade skill educator), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The researcher recruited 15 participants using a convenience method, and the participants conducted a 4-part usability test. They were introduced to the study, performed 2 tasks, and then the researcher interviewed the participants at the end of the test. This study found that participants experienced pain-points while using the websites to perform the task. These included trouble with finding information on the local branch of national NPO websites, frequent requests for contact information, frequent requests for monetary donations, and trouble navigating map visualizations.
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Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Flaherty, Mary Grace
Degree
  • Master of Science in Library Science
Academic concentration
  • Library and Information Science
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2017
Language
Deposit record
  • 4764b1de-b615-4b8a-85be-8af021c94d7c

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