Fred Hutch
Cook For Your Life Usability Study
Background
CookforYourLife.org is a non-profit website funded through The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. It is dedicated to providing medically-sound, healthy recipes and lifestyle tips for current patients, survivors of cancer and people hoping to prevent cancer.
Team: Caroline Gomez, Jessah Hofker, Tony Ji, Cheewen Jing
Study Objectives
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Determine usability benchmarks for cookforyourlife.org
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Assess how users find, browse, and engage with recipes
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Assess usability of the integrated widgets within the recipe pages
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Assess general information architecture of the site
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Focus participants on cancer patients and cancer survivors
Research Questions
● How easily and successfully can users find blog posts, recipes, and videos that address their symptoms?
● How do users navigate to a desired recipe?
● How well does the organization and flow of the site match users’ expectations?
● How do users feel about how long it takes them to complete a given task, both the perceived time and the number of steps?
● Do users find this website is equipped to help them find resources to prevent cancer, find cancer treatment or information about survivorship?
Methodology
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Screener survey
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8 Participants (4 cancer patients and 4 cancer survivors)
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8 Remote usability test sessions conducted over Zoom (roughly an hour)
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One moderator and one note-taker present in each session
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5 tasks per session
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Post-study questionnaire
Quantitative Data
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Success rate per task
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Time per task
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Number of unique errors made per task, if any
Qualitative Data
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Session recordings
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Sessions were semi-structured to allow follow-up questions
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Likert scale questions to gauge perceptions of task difficulty
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Pre-task assessment: How difficult do you anticipate this task will be?
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SEQ: This task was?
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Post-test: SUS assessment with potential open-ended follow-up questions
Findings
The Good
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8 out of 8 users said they would use this site for recipes
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77.5% of all tasks were successfully completed
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High praise for the quality of imagery across the site
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High appreciation for the presence of filters in several aspects of the site geared towards specific side effects of receiving cancer treatment
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Appreciation for resources and blog posts that are certified and written by professional dietitians
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As cancer patients and survivors, they felt this website addresses their needs and concerns better than other recipe websites they have used
Opportunities for improvement
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Adding ingredients to the shopping cart widget was not intuitive
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The video library content did not match user expectations
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Recipe filters need additional dietary considerations
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The search results often were not relevant to users’ queries
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Many users struggled to find the blog section
Key Issues
Issue #1 : Shopping cart integration with recipes led to confusion
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The feature was not intuitive for users
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3 out of 8 users initially missed the buttons when trying to complete this task
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6 out of 8 users who completed this task experienced various issues getting the cart integration to work
Recommendations
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Rearrange content so that the button is more visible
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Separate store selection from the ‘Add to Cart’ button
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This feature might be more successful if users' grocery routines were better understood and study how this feature could complement them
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Consider scrapping the feature, according to Google Analytics data no users of the website use this function
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Users need more freedom to select or deselect individual ingredients and change quantity.
Issue #2: Search Bar Function Fails Users
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2 out of 2 users who attempted to use the search bar failed to find what they were looking for
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Users searched for a variety of content including: blog posts, type of recipes (e.g. chicken recipe), video content, community support and were unsuccessful in all categories
Recommendations
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Provide a way for users to filter their search results
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Improve search algorithm
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Alter the “Learn More” CTA to correspond to the type of search result (e.g. Read the blog, Watch the video, Get the recipe)
Next Steps
After conducting an initial usability study of the cookforyourlife.org website, our team recommends additional testing.
Specifically, we recommend focusing on understanding user expectations on information architecture and hierarchy. A valuable tool for this type of test would be card sorting or focus groups to better understand where users would expect specific types of information to live.
Given the international reach of cookforyourlife.org, we recommend focusing future tests on key demographics and geographic areas that map to the percentage of global users. In areas where English is not the primary language, it may be valuable to conduct a study on the translated version of the site.
Our participants cited the recipes as the driving force behind their repeat use of the site, we also recommend understanding qualitative data as it relates to the individual recipes.