Testing, testing, testing. We designed a plan that engaged our audience every step of the way. Here’s an outline of what we did:

• Review of initial research – AHS conducted thorough research on not only the Better Health Better Business program itself, but on the drivers their audience had in the first place for engaging with such a program – and what they need out of it. We used this research as a starting point to form our hypothesis and a low-fidelity prototypes of both the website and program.

• In-person interviews – ZGM led several sessions across Alberta to test our prototypes with different audience segments. Our research objectives were to test general IA, the depth of content, and the flow of the program to ensure it met our users’ needs and expectations. While allowing users to run through rough wireframes, we watched how they interacted with everything before launching into more guided questions. From there, we used our observations and the feedback to modify the product and create the first iteration of the website and first level of the three-tiered program. This also allowed us to create in-depth personas for four key audiences.

• User testing – The goal of this stage was primarily to test functionality of the program itself, while ensuring there were no major red flags with the overall site layout and content. We worked with AHS to define a series of tasks and used an online service to quickly execute on these. From there, we found a few small areas to improve on, but other than that, we were good to launch.

• Database and analytics set-up – We developed the database and setup analytics in a way that allows us to track how users are engaging with the program (e.g. how long it takes them to upload a step after downloading resources, how they are interacting with page elements, etc.).

THE OUTCOME