PHA Eye Tracking Study
Client: Philadelphia Housing Authority(PHA)
Role: UX Designer, UX Researcher
Brief: Conduct aa UX research study to identify pain points in usability the PHA Housing Program interfaces
Skills Used: Tobii, Adobe Creative Suite
The Philadelphia Housing Authority offers a program for low-income families to get access to affordable housing in thriving communities. Despite PHA resources and efforts, many applicants are denied based on incomplete applications and/or missing documents. The program team at PHA sought out to figure our why applicants were struggling to gain acceptance into the program.
The Process
Since majority of program applicants are defined as “low-literacy individuals” (in this case, those who read at or below an 8th grade level), it was appropriate to do an eye tracking study to determine where people were having comprehension issues when reading program documents.
Heat mapping from eye tracking studies showed that heavy wording caused frustration for participants, and they were not able to retain information. After redesigning the document to large numbers, bolded text, and more graphics, information retention increased significantly.
