Enhancing User Experience for a Leading Food Manufacturer: Our User Testing Journey

read time: 5 min

Tyson Kingsbury

Creative Director

For the past several years, we at Veriday have had the pleasure of refining and perfecting digital experiences for our clients. Recently, we embarked on a significant project for the largest privately held cheese products manufacturing company in the US. They tasked Veriday with transforming their internal portal into a more user-friendly and efficient tool. Here’s a closer look at how our user testing process drove this transformation.

Understanding the Challenge

Our client approached us with a clear but daunting challenge: their existing portal was outdated, difficult to maintain, and frustrating for employees to use. The goal was to design a new portal that would not only streamline content creation and posting but also make the user experience enjoyable.

Setting the Stage: Our Approach to User Testing

User testing is at the heart of our UX process. It’s about gathering real user feedback to uncover pain points and discover opportunities for improvement. Here’s how we approached it for this project:

User Interviews: We started by conducting in-depth interviews with a cross-section of employees. These conversations helped us understand their day-to-day interactions with the portal, uncovering both major pain points and smaller annoyances that hindered their productivity.
Usability Testing: With insights from the interviews, we developed a prototype. Employees interacted with this prototype during usability testing sessions, providing immediate feedback on what worked and what didn’t. This step was crucial in pinpointing exactly where users struggled and how we could make the portal more intuitive to facilitate easier adoption.
Surveys and Feedback Forms: To supplement our qualitative data, we distributed surveys and feedback forms across a broader audience within the company. This gave us a more comprehensive view of user satisfaction and highlighted common issues and trends.

Key Findings and Improvements

Our user testing revealed several critical insights:

Navigation Issues: Employees often struggled to find the desired information. To address this, our team worked extensively to create a new and more effective information architecture, and were able to produce a more streamlined, intuitive navigation system.
Content Management: The existing portal made content creation a hassle. We simplified this process with an easy-to-use editor and clear guidelines, enabling users to post updates and documents without needing technical assistance.
Performance and Load Times: Users reported slow load times, which frustrated them and hindered productivity. By optimizing the portal’s performance, including resizing and correctly formatting images, we significantly reduced load times.
Visual Consistency: Inconsistent design elements were causing confusion. We established a cohesive design language, ensuring all elements were visually consistent and aligned with the company’s brand guidelines.

Results and Benefits

The result of our rigorous user testing and iterative design process was a completely revamped portal that employees found both functional and delightful to use, resulting in several key benefits:

Increased Efficiency: Employees could complete tasks more quickly and with fewer errors, leading to improved productivity.
Enhanced User Satisfaction: The intuitive design and faster performance resulted in higher user satisfaction and reduced frustration.
Better Content Management: The streamlined content creation process empowered employees to share information more effectively, fostering better communication and collaboration.
Strengthened Brand Identity: The consistent visual design reinforced the company’s brand identity and created a more professional and polished appearance.

Conclusion

Our experience with this leading food manufacturer highlighted the critical role of thorough user testing in creating exceptional digital experiences. By listening to real users and iterating on our designs based on their feedback, we delivered a solution that not only met the client’s needs but also delighted their employees. At Veriday, we believe that user-centered design is the key to digital success, and we are committed to helping our clients achieve their goals through meticulous UX practices.

If you are looking to enhance its digital platforms and improve user satisfaction, we invite you to partner with Veriday. Feel free to contact us.