Unraveled

TLDR If you go to ravelry.com/preferences and check the box next to Usability Testing Volunteer, that’d be a big help!

Good morning Ravelers!

Part of my job as your new Producer/User Experience (UX) Designer is to have a deep understanding of all the different ways Ravelers use this wonderful website. We’re a diverse community and Ravelry is a big website, so we all probably do things a little differently. Maybe some of you use the Notebook but never go on the forums, or go to different pages first when you first log in, or we organize our projects differently—that’s what I want to learn. By understanding not only how I use Ravelry, but how you use Ravelry, I can make informed design decisions that benefit all of us.

One way that Product/UX Designers learn about how people use a website is by asking them, during a conversation or via a survey. I’ll definitely be doing things like that in the future (keep an eye out!), but it’s also helpful for me to simply see people use Ravelry as they do in their everyday life. In product/UX design, we call this Behavioral User Research. And while I wish I could come over to everyone’s houses and sit next to you while you’re scrollin around Rav, that would take a long time! But with a little digital magic, we can do something similar.

Here’s how: We put a new setting in your preferences that lets Ravelers opt in to let me see how you navigate around the site. To get to your preferences, hover over your Ravatar in the very top right of any page on Rav and click Preferences. On that page, you’ll see a new option under Beta Testing that says “Usability Testing Volunteer: Track my Ravelry usage for usability testing purposes.” Checking that box will help me see how you use Ravelry.

When you check that box, here’s what I will be able to see:

• What pages you go to on Ravelry
• What country you live in
• What device/browser you’re using

This will only be visible to me and the Ravelry staff (Casey, Jess, Mary Heather, Sarah, and Christina). No personal or private information will ever be visible to us. Most websites are always tracking this information about you, but we’re not most websites! That’s why we’re asking Ravelers to opt in by checking that setting in your preferences.

And that’s it! If you have any questions about this post, Behavioral User Research, or Product/UX Design in general, please don’t hesitate to message me or tag me in a forum post. As always, I’m @livia.