Omulu Capoeira - improved website http://www.mncapoeira.org
Omulu Capoeira is a martial arts academy based in the Twin Cities. They practice capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines aspects of music, dance and gymnastics.
Omulu Capoeira was founded 7 years ago. They have come a long way since their beginning. Their first classes were held in rented rooms on the University of Minnesota campus and today they have their own studio space in Richfield. James Lynch and Jenny Blanchard are hoping to continue to grow their group so that it can become financially self-sustaining.
Open house at Omulu Capoeira's new studio.
Omulu Capoeira has many people who come to try out a class. They have several avenues of attracting newcomers - from personal referrals, to online deals through Groupon and paper advertising through fliers and local newspapers. The challenge is retaining these new people. Many newcomers try a class or two and do not return.
In order to solve this problem, I planned a user-centered research project with four phases: Research, Design, Testing and Redesign.
I interviewed 9 subjects. In order to get the full picture I interveiwed many different types of members - new students, volunteer class leaders and the owners.
With the information I learned from the contextual research I built a presentation for the owners of Omulu containing the significant findings from my interviews. There were many areas that could use improvement, including but not limited to their website.
I used personas in my presentation to help communicate who I wanted to represent to the owners.
I built a presentation for the owners of Omulu containing the significant findings from my interviews. One of the most significant findings was that all different kinds of newcomers had little idea of what capoeira class would be like before they came. This was even true for people who came on a recommendation from a friend! And although there were a couple people who enjoyed the thrill of the unknown - most newcomers told me that their uncertainty in their first class caused them to feel nervous and have a bad time.
The Omulu website is a newcomer's first impression of the group. In it's current form it is not giving a good impression. I decided to redesign this website with the newcomers' most common questions in mind.
The original Omulu Website is fairly basic. It looks dated and unprofessional.
Keeping my new student persona in mind, I chose to redesign the home page so that it would include more images and clearer paths to the information they would need to know before their first class.
I expanded the information in the new student hub and built a form for signing up for an introduction class - something the old site did not have at all.
I chose to test the prototype in a free-form manner. I felt that the website and the interactions I designed were simple enough that pure usability testing would not be useful with regards to the overarching problem of new student retention. To that end I included real information in my prototype tests rather than dummy text. I wanted to find out what was important to potential new students - what did they appreciate, what did they ignore, and what more did they want to know before trying a new class.
So far I have conducted three prototype tests. I have already begun working on improvements to the wireframes. On the home page - two of the three interviewees disliked the middle subtitle "Who can do it." They told me they would rather know more about what the group is like - and thus I changed it to "Who are we?" I feel that this heading can still contain the information that "who can do it" would. It lets the user know what kind of people are involved in the group.
Additionally, most interviewees were confused by the menu heading "Demonstrations" a section that would contain information about demos the group is performing for the community. The users actually thought that "Demonstrations" meant demonstrations of capoeira moves. I changed the heading to "Performances" to make that more clear.
All interview subjects reacted poorly to the submenu on the right side of the wireframes. Another change I would make right away would be to move the submenu to the left side of the page - which would also make it more consistent with typical websites.
In the months following my research project, the owners of the group decided to begin a redesign of their website.
I am working with a small team (myself, Jim Bozic and Alan Roeman) to refine and update the website.
Our first redisgn is now live, but we are continuing to evaluate the page with other group members and new students.
