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Megan Ellinger
Web Communications Specialist
The National Academies |
Reducing abandonment... and getting the National Academies on the usability bandwagon
by Jesse Berkowitz
The National Academies include four non-profit, independent institutions:
- National Academy of Sciences
- National Research Council
- National Academy of Engineering
- Institute of Medicine
These private organizations perform a tremendous public service by bringing together experts in all areas of science, technology, and medicine. The experts serve pro bono to address critical national issues, advise the U.S. government, and provide free public information that is available worldwide.
Megan Ellinger began her career at the National Research Council's Ocean Studies Board. Upon transferring to the digital team in the Office of Communications, however, her inquisitive nature made her the ideal person to launch a usability program.
| "I care about how people interact with our Web sites since the Academies have such a positive impact. Millions of people depend on the scientific recommendations we provide, especially in developing countries." |
"If you're passionately curious, then usability is the field for you," she says. "I care about how people interact with our Web sites since the Academies have such a positive impact. Millions of people depend on the scientific recommendations we provide, especially in developing countries. We publish over 200 books each year – many of which can be downloaded as a PDF for free – and thousands of reports are already available online in full text. In many developing nations, it would take a month's salary if people had to purchase hard copy versions of these materials."
Through her work with the National Academies Press (the publishing branch of the Academies), Megan has helped the organization realize one of its main goals: disseminate as much free content as possible while still breaking even.
"We recently completed a redesign of our online shopping cart," says Megan. "We felt that some basic changes could help reduce abandonment (i.e. a user adds items to the shopping cart but doesn't complete their order). Because the Academies keep giving more and more content away, we've had fewer opportunities to sell our materials. We picked this project because it offered a chance to clearly demonstrate the value of usability.
"During our redesign, we relied heavily on heuristic reviews, since we didn't have a substantial budget for usability testing. Despite the limitations, we were still able to reduce abandonment by 5% in the two months post-redesign, which translates to a significant amount of additional revenue."
Throughout all of Megan's projects, she and her team make an effort to engage internal stakeholders in the process to get buy-in and introduce people to usability. She has also worked closely with the customer service department to identify areas for improvement. To help build usability awareness, Megan even offered 45-minute lunchtime presentations on color usage and other usability guidelines, providing actionable takeaways that people could implement immediately. Her sessions were so popular that Megan developed a follow up tutorial.
While Megan's understanding of the scientific method helps her design usability test protocol, she's not afraid to employ a more low-tech approach when needed: Snickers testing.
"Basically, I sit in the lunch room and offer people a Snickers bar if they'll come over and answer a few questions about a site or prototype," she explains. "In this job, you can't be afraid to look funny...but you get a lot of good laughs yourself, too.
"The overall attitude has gone from 'Do we have to do usability?' to 'We need to do usability.' The presentations and showcase projects have been much more effective than putting out a memo or issuing best practice guidelines as a mandate. Now people see the value of going through the process for themselves."
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