Instructables is an online community of people who like to make things. Our homepage was static and outdated and needed a modern refresh. I worked with our internal product team to gather insights from our users and design a new homepage to better serve their needs.
My roles: conducted user research, created mockups, gathered feedback, iterated on designs, worked with product manager to break into manageable steps and write up specs, and collaborated closely with our development team to ensure a successful launch.
Process
I helped lead a round of user research so that we could better understand how users experience our site and what pain points they had. I ran UserTesting.com tests to get a feel for what a new visitor thinks of our site and if they can easily understand who we are and what we do. We sent out a survey to all of our existing users to learn about their usage patterns and also conducted live video interviews to hear from long-time members of our community.
Quotes from long-time users about the old homepage:
"I’ve been using Instructables for longer than I can remember. Most of the homepage is promoted, stuff about Instructables, instead of the projects I might be looking for. I come back to the site all the time - I don’t need to know what the site’s about. "
"The fact that the projects are not the first things that are featured. I think that banner is a little confusing. Once I get past the banner and get down to exploring projects, I’ll generally find something that piques my interest."
Homepage insights & recommendations
The big takeaway here was that the top banner and marketing blurbs were interesting to first-time visitors but not at all useful to long-time members who have been using Instructables for years and just want to see projects.
• Different homepage views depending on whether the user is logged in or logged out.
• For logged out (new) users, show marketing and feature new staff curated collections.
• For logged in users, skip the marketing and show projects from their custom feed.
• Add more content and update frequently. Users have no motivation to visit if static.
