Case Study ‣ UX Research, Discovery Phase
Improving Access to City Resources for Young New Yorkers
Generation NYC is an online resource for young people entering adulthood, managed by Mayor’s Office for Economy Opportunity.
Background
Generation NYC, an official product of the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, is an online resource for NYC teens and young adults. The website includes information on topics like housing, finances, and education, as well as inspirational interviews with local youth.
Project Objective
The product team at the Mayor’s Office sought to iterate on Generation NYC. Specifically, the team aimed to:
Evaluate the site’s organizational structure and navigation to improve usability
Explore new content and features to ensure the site meets the needs of young New Yorkers
My Role
I led a user research workshop with 15 teens from the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) Youth Leadership Council. My team included product managers, copywriters, engineers, and service designers.
Methods & Key Learnings
Methods
The workshop consisted of an evaluative component, where participants completed a usability test of the current site. Metrics included time-on-task, successful task completion, and qualitative insights such as likes, dislikes, and recommendations on how to improve the user experience.
The latter half of the workshop was generative as participants card sorted what topics they found most valuable (e.g. school, work, budgeting, counseling, health insurance, and LGBTQIA+ resources). They also brainstormed what details they’d want to see for certain topics, jotting down ideas on printed webpages.
Key Learnings
Overall, participants found Generation NYC easy to use and helpful for New York youth. Some areas for improvement included:
Highlighting the texting feature as it was helpful for staying informed, but was overlooked at the bottom
Clarifying the headlines since users tended to browse quickly and click on more descriptive headlines
Creating resources for life skills and mental health as users felt like those were not available in school
Usability test scenario and task cards
Card sort of content topics
Impact
Following the workshop, I delivered insights and recommendations to the product and content teams, informing the next iteration of Generation NYC.
As part of my deliverable, I also recommended process improvements for future user testing, which included working in small groups for collaborative, generative brainstorms with participants.