UP150

In celebration of Union Pacific’s 150th year the Marketing and Branding department wanted to build a public facing website to educate and celebrate along with the communities we serve. The website had 3 main components – an interactive timeline, a place for individuals to share their stories and photos about Union Pacific which were later bound into a book for purchase and a commercial remake contest.

Challenge

To create a website that served 3 distinct purposes, but still worked together collectively, would draw a lot of attention and be simple enough for several generations to use. In addition the timeline needed to also be accessible on a specialized large touchscreen device installed in a moving museum.

Solution

I was thrilled to be part of this project bringing together a great team, fascinating history and exciting design. I knew I wanted to do usability testing on this site because we were combining 3 very different activities in one place and we wanted lots of participation from the community. I used low cost “coffee shop testing” by taking a laptop to a local coffee shop and asking patrons if they would like to spend a few minutes giving me feedback on our site in exchange for a coffee shop gift card. I asked each participant to complete the same tasks using the website and received lots of feedback from people with various technology backgrounds using this method. I was able to create a report of my findings and bring them back to the design team. From there we modified the design and retested. We saw greatly improved understanding and task completion during retesting.

Result

In the end, the campaign was a great success with 188 video and 164 story submissions.

Tools & Methods Used

• Usability Testing

Artifacts

• https://www.uprr.com/newsinfo/releases/up150/2012/0322_promontory.shtm

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBRuEYP1TCI

• https://www.up.com/cs/groups/public/documents/up_pdf_nativedocs/omhq17a129812002928.pdf