Realtor.ca wanted to remove some elements to improve technical performance and improve other parts of the app. We encouraged to do a usability testing to see if it's necessary to remove some elements and that it might be more about improving the experience of the location of elements and how they're being used.
For 3 days of testing 12 participants, we identified that the main issues were in regards to how features were performing and presented, and we recommended improving these rather than removing some of them. We also provided recommendations for elements they were seeking improvements for such as the lack of affordances for saved searches and complexity of the demographics content.
For this project page, I will only speak in detail of one of the features that were tested and the results after the testing. I have a link to a sneak peek of the report as well that only briefly mentions bits and pieces of it due to being a research artifact.
While working with Plastic Mobile, I was working closely with the business analyst on planning, recruiting and moderating a usability testing on some features of the realtor.ca app. We gathered an understanding of what the features were that the client considered not keeping as well as wanting to find out why some features weren't being utilized.
We tested in a course of 3 days with a total of 12 participants who are planning to look for new properties and in the middle of looking.
The keyword search was one of the features that the client believed that since the keyword search wasn't being utilized, by removing it, it would increase performance and it would be a low impact. However, we strongly encouraged testing this hypothesis. As predicted, the treatment of the keyword search feature was not noticeable for most of the users when we asked them if they would consider the keyword search after they performed the initial search without it for their next property. Almost half were looking for condos and had some specifics that they were looking for such as high ceilings, storage, balcony, etc that were not in the details on the property page. Some of the users were not satisfied with the listings because of those missing details that weren't applied to the search which resulted in a long list of properties for them to look through. We also identified that some keywords that were used didn't help narrow down results which means the keyword search was exclusive of listings with exact matches of attributes/values. This may also indicate that content on the listings needs to be improved as well.
Testing the keyword search revealed some interesting opportunities for improvement. Not only was the treatment of the feature poor but for those that did notice the keyword search, they didn't feel confident enough to use it or assumed that the system won't match the results properly. Some said they weren't sure what or how to type a keyword.
Overall, recommendations were then provided to the client on how to improve the keyword search rather than removing it based on the evidence we gathered. The key recommendations were to provide creative treatment for the keyword search to be noticed, assist users on common keywords they can check off based on property types previously selected, and modify the keyword search to not be exclusive to properties/listings with exact matches to avoid missing specifics users want to find and poor results, as well as make those properties with the keyword match prominent in the results.
As I mentioned before, I won't be giving away more details of this usability testing project but if you would like to learn more about it, please contact me. For now, here is a sneak peek of the report.
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