Ben Weisz

Overview

Due to an existing NDA, I cannot share certain information however, I can speak on my role.

I worked on multiple projects focusing on user interviews, surveys, concept testing, usability testing, and tree testing. During each project, I was working with product management, engineering, and design from initial planning until implementation. My role was autonomous and I handled all aspects from planning to reporting.

Project Summary
I was brought on to conduct research for the Fund, Win Team at Zillow. The current issue they were having was that navigation to content related to home buying was dropping off. The team had put together a new site map for this section and wanted to test out its effectiveness.

Planning
The project had a 3 week runway, I spent the first week getting background on the business objective, team, and prior research relating to the project. With this information, I began putting together a research plan and testing script, keeping an open dialogue with the team.

Methodology
My approach was to conduct tree testing in order to identify navigation patterns amongst participants. We wanted to capture users across the home buying journey, so I recruited for people in early, mid, and late home-buying stages. Our hypothesis was that users would perform best at navigating to content relating to their current home-buying stage. 

Script
My testing script included a few user interview questions prior to tree testing in order to better understand how users see themselves and how they align with our definition of early, mid, and late-stage home buyers. The core of my script had navigation prompts for tree testing and I ended with evaluation prompts on the content topics they just viewed.

Testing
I recruited 30 participants across the three user groups of early, mid, and late-stage home buyers. I launched a few pilot test sessions in order to
fine-tune the study. This resulted in rephrasing some questions in order to make the steps clearer, as well as shortening the total testing time for participants. 

Report
I put together all the data collected and gave initial results to the team as I was putting together my final report. I used Optimal Workshop’s tools to help with my data analysis and I synthesized my work to represent how the navigation patterns matched across the three different user groups. Showcasing where they aligned, differentiated, and what topics were most interesting to them. I presented my findings to the immediate team as well as other interested parties.

Result

• We learned which paths were most difficult and which had the highest success, leading to consolidation and faster navigation

• Participants in the early stage of home buying had the highest success in navigation