Braata Productions Heuristic Evaluation

My time at the Pratt Institute also allowed me to learn new skills outside of my comfort zone — one of which was developing a user-centered design approach. During my first semester, I was able to put fundamental concepts in usability research into practice by conducting a heuristic evaluation for a real client, producing recommendations to improve their website content and marketing strategy.

For our evaluation study, we worked with Braata Productions, a New York City-based Caribbean Arts and Culture nonprofit. In order to understand what feedback would be useful for Braata, we met with the organization's founder to gain insight into who they were attempting to reach, their current marketing strategies, and what they wanted to highlight on their website and social media presence. Our research group then conducted card sorting to suggest a more fluid layout for their site architecture.

We then recruited user testers within the Braata target demographic to perform a moderated user test, seeking feedback on specific areas of the website that needed improvement. Once our data from user testing sessions was analyzed, we came up with three concrete suggestions to improve the usability of Braata's website and presented our findings to the founder. To read the outcomes of the study, click here.