Overview

Assistlist is a charitable organization that provides an online marketplace to buy, sell or donate health and medical equipment. Assistlist's goal is to support those in need of equipment, and those who no longer need their equipment online, and to promote positive environmental action via encouraging the re-use and rehoming of equipment. I've volunteered at Assistlist since October 2021, assisting with user research, and user experience design.

The Assistlist Blog is a new project that the organization have been working on since last year. Assistlist want to promote the website through the blog, increase organic search engine traffic, and most importantly help their users by providing articles to support their process buying or selling equipment online. Myself and another volunteer UX/UI Designer, Anvika were tasked with the research to help meet the organizational requirements, the requirements of the design team, and the requirements of the other teams (marketing, health care and development).

Main Objectives of the Design Team

Ensure strong user experience on the new blog(usability, accessibility, consistency).

Define & design to user goals/requirements, organizational requirements.

Consider longer term growth & scalability.

Make sure those who discover AssistList through the blog can link seamlessly to AssistList.ca

Considering these objectives, we came up with a  list of Research Objectives.

Research Objectives

Observe the actions of existing AssistList site users to build a space for them to read resource articles.

Gain an understanding of the requirements of Assistlist blog publishers.

Understand what our existing users need- in what areas do they not feel supported?

Assumptions

Blog section will be visited by users willing to read about healthcare and health equipment.

Existing users will use the blog section to learn about the listed equipment.

Assistlist site and blog will be an ecosystem for users researching medical equipment.

Physical therapists and caregivers looking for medical equipment will be a primary and returning user base.

We are assuming that the new users incoming to the blog will be primarily buyers.

We primarily used Fullstory and Hotjar to conduct our research, and collected our notes on InVision

Who's visiting Assistlist.ca?

New Visitors

At the time we conducted our research, 77% of users were new visitors.

Devices used

Primarily desktop users, with a non-negligible number of tablet and mobile users.

Referrers

An overwhelming 91% of users in the past month found Assistlist from Google search results.

Fullstory findings

Analyzing the behaviour of users visiting the Resources Page. 

- A lot of exploratory behaviour, clicking through the top level navigation menu items.

- Users scroll down quickly to “browse”. 

- Sometimes users clicked on “How Assistlist Works” and “Safe Exchange Zones”.

Hotjar

Analyzing heatmaps of the Resources Page. 

- Out of the questions on “Frequently Asked Questions”, we have a lot of clicks on questions about how to buy and sell on Assistlist, and questions about COVID safety.

- Most users who were “exploring”, as mentioned on the last page left after scrolling slightly past the fold.

Analyzing Seller Personas

Analyzing existing seller personas to figure out what they can gain from an Assistlist blog 

Analyzing Buyer Personas

Analyzing existing buyer personas to figure out what they can gain from an Assistlist blog 

Conclusions from Research

- A large number of users are in “research mode” when on Assistlist, assessing the site’s safety, and looking at listings. A supportive blog environment with helpful articles would help keep them mindful of Assistlist in their sea of research.

- Users who are digging into the resources page seem to be mostly interested in COVID safety and how to use Assistlist. 

- A large number of our users are coming from web search results. We can assume that the same kinds of users we already have (the research heavy ones) would also visit our blog via search results.

Recommendations

- We can support our users by providing articles about buying and selling on Assistlist.

- We can support our buyers by relieving them of their research-fatigue. We can provide articles for caretakers, or articles related to their research.

- We can support our sellers by providing a supportive ecosystem - focusing on a fast and easy selling process, and articles that can help them with their transition.