After synthesizing our data from the comparative analysis, and user interviews the team started to develop our persona. We focused on one persona as the audience of individuals that would be applying for funding or grants, especially from the National Science Foundation, would be rather small. We knew that we could focus all of the users concerns into one persona. While, our users backgrounds and time in the field are different they all shared many of the same frustrations and behaviors when applying for funding or a grant.
We conducted a Hybrid Card Sort, where users can categorize items in specific categories or create their own category if they feel it does not fit in to any of the categories provided. 13 individuals participated, and 8 of those participants have experience applying for grants or funding. We focused on the results from those 8 individuals. We provided 5 categories for users to sort the cards into; Funding Type, Find Grant Funding, Profile, Education Level and Research Areas. Each category had the predicted items sorted at the highest rates. There were 3 additional categories created by one user; Applicants, Grant Guidelines and Process. These results help guide how we setup how users filter and search for grants and what features would be available in the user profile.
60% of the cards were categorized into 2 or less categories by our users.
Each provided category had an agreement rate of over 50%.
The predicted items in each category ranked the highest by each user.
The current task flow that must be taken by users on the current National Science Foundation (NSF)website is confusing and leads the user to a dead end within their website. Users are able to filter and sort their searches through a variety of ways; by education level, field of research, award type and due dates. Users are able to view the important details about the grant such as due dates, funding overview and program contacts. However, this is where the process ends on the NSF website. At this point users must save the Grant ID number, navigate to a different website to login and search for the specific grant and start the proposal and application process.
Save a grant in Geosciences based on the Arctic to your profile and navigate to your profile to start the application process for that saved grant.
User will be able to search, save, and start the process of applying for a grant within the experience of one website within 4 minutes and with less than 2 errors.
For the Usability Testing we also made sure that our users were individuals who have spent time submitting proposals and applying for grants or funding. We set the scenario for our users through the development of our persona. Our users are driven by their curiosity and are detail-oriented. They carry a deep level of passion in their work and goals are to contribute to the scientific community through groundbreaking research. They use the NSF website to search and apply for research grants regularly.
Overall the results of our usability testing were positive. Each user completed the task within our parameters set in our objective. 3 out of 5 users made 2 errors. For these users, the errors were consistent. They tried to login to their profile before starting the search for the grant. They also tried to navigate back through the app, and called out the lack of an actual back action throughout the mobile site.
Made logging in to your profile actionable before proceeding to search for the grant.
Added seamless back navigation throughout the prototype.
Added a "save grant" option to the list of grants, so the user does not have to navigate to another screen if they are able to find what they are looking for without needing additional information.
The results from our usability testing drove the functional changes that we made in our prototype. These changes helped the mobile site run smoothly and made finding important information effortless. In the next iteration of our prototype we also added the National Science Foundation branding. We did make changes to the overall look and feel. We simplified the color palette, implemented only one typeface, used bold imagery and added the use of icons throughout the site.
The biggest takeaway from our research was that users would not apply for a grant or funding through a mobile platform because of how intensive the process is. Because of this we would add a module within the mobile user flow, to inform users that the application process must be completed on desktop. We would then continue to design the desktop platform in consistency with our mobile prototype, in which users would actually start grant proposal application process and be able to submit their applications within their profile on the National Science Foundation website.
