{
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    "title" : "Consumer Action Handbook – Usability Case Study |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Consumer Action Handbook – Usability Case Study",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39/2014/06/06/consumer-action-handbook-usability-case-study/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Consumer Action Handbook \u0026#8211; Usability Case Study","summary" : "The Consumer Action Handbook is a guide to making smarter decisions with your money. It’s print and online formats, available in English and Spanish, include a compilation of buying tips from across government agencies, updates on the latest scams, and a robust consumer contact directory.","date" : "2014-06-06T10:00:32-04:00","date_modified" : "2024-07-10T08:44:18-04:00","authors" : {"tlowden" : "Tim Lowden","marietta-jelks" : "Marietta Jelks"},"topics" : {
        
            "design" : "Design",
            "research" : "Research",
            "usability" : "Usability",
            "user-experience" : "User Experience"
            },"branch" : "snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39",
      "filename" :"2014-06-06-consumer-action-handbook-usability-case-study.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2014/06/2014-06-06-consumer-action-handbook-usability-case-study.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39/content/news/2014/06/2014-06-06-consumer-action-handbook-usability-case-study.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39/content/news/2014/06/2014-06-06-consumer-action-handbook-usability-case-study.md","slug" : "consumer-action-handbook-usability-case-study","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39/2014/06/06/consumer-action-handbook-usability-case-study/","content" :"\n\n\n\n  \n\u003carticle\n  class=\"dg-note dg-note--alert\"\n\u003e\n  \u003ch4 class=\"dg-note__heading\"\u003e\n    \u003csvg\n      class=\"dg-note__icon usa-icon dg-icon dg-icon--large\"\n      aria-hidden=\"true\"\n      focusable=\"false\"\n    \u003e\n      \u003cuse xlink:href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39/uswds/img/sprite.svg#report\"\u003e\u003c/use\u003e\n    \u003c/svg\u003e\n    \n      \n        Alert\n      \n    \n  \u003c/h4\u003e\n  The \u003cstrong\u003eConsumer Action Handbook\u003c/strong\u003e by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is no longer in production. The last one was published in 2017 and there are no more hard copies available.\u003cbr /\u003e\nTo request other free U.S. government publications, visit the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) \u003ca href=\"https://pueblo.gpo.gov/\"\u003ePueblo Distribution Center website\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003c/article\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe annual Consumer Action Handbook, from GSA, is a guide to making smarter decisions with your money. In both its print and \u003ca href=\"https://www.usa.gov/topics/consumer/consumer-action-handbook-online.shtml\"\u003eonline\u003c/a\u003e formats, it includes a compilation of buying tips from across government agencies, updates on the latest scams, and a robust consumer contact directory. But the most popular part of the book is the sample consumer complaint letter.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe letter template is printed in every edition of the Handbook. This year, the Consumer Action Handbook team wanted to make the letter more interactive. The goal was to help frustrated consumers who had a problem with a product or service. The team formed the idea for a complaint letter wizard  for consumers to answer a few questions and end up with a downloadable letter they could edit and mail to the company. To make the process faster, the team hoped to auto-populate the company contact information from a database.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo began the creation of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.usa.gov/topics/consumer/complaint/complaint-letter-wizard.shtml\"\u003eConsumer Complaint Wizard\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe team—composed of developers, designers, accessibility experts, a project manager, and a consumer professional—started exploring the possibility of creating different versions of the Wizard, which would correlate to the type of complaint; be it for a product, a service, rental or lease. The technical team created a mock-up, but after much discussion, they realized the process of transferring the logic of the letter to the Wizard was more complex than originally thought. So, the team took a step back and thought about process of writing a complaint letter, eventually creating a decision tree.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor each of the steps below, visitors would add certain pieces of information, like the date they purchased the product, or a manufacturing number.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/06/933-x-614-Steps-done-on-the-website.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Steps 1 through 5 done on the website\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom there, wireframes of the pages were created and the Wizard was broken into 5 steps:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExplanation of the product or service\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMailing address of the company\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDescription of the problem\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChoosing a resolution and\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA preview of the letter\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Complaint Wizard also features “help” text and examples associated with a light bulb icon, so that visitors have more knowledge of what is intended to be input (shown below).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/06/600-x-200-Step-1-Information-about-product-or-service-2-annotated.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Annotated screen capture of Step 1\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eAfter five months of refinement, the Wizard was tested internally. The results included valuable feedback, both positive and negative. For instance, several people noted that the purchase date for a product shouldn’t be able to be dated for a future time, since a complaint letter would only be necessary for something purchased in the past. To solve this problem, the team created error messages with the date selectors to prevent invalid dates (see below).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/06/600-x-385-when-did-the-transaction-happen-3-annotated.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Annotated screen capture date options\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eAnother fix was to add a category, “Getting a replacement”, as an option consumers could request for their problems. A general theme in the feedback was that people didn’t understand how to use the navigation tools (e.g.”back” and “next” buttons, “Step 2, Step 3” etc.) of the Wizard. To clarify, the team added a “quick tips” box on the left side of the screen to remind users how to use them (shown below).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/06/945-x-480-Consumer-Complaint-Letter-Wizard-5-annotated.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Annotated screen capture of Consumer Complaint Letter Wizard\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eTake a look at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.usa.gov/topics/consumer/complaint/complaint-letter-wizard.shtml\"\u003eConsumer Complaint Letter Wizard\u003c/a\u003e yourself to get a better idea of the process and experience the new, more usable online tool!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMarietta Jelks is the Editor-in-Chief of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.usa.gov/topics/consumer/consumer-action-handbook-online.shtml\"\u003eConsumer Action Handbook\u003c/a\u003e and consumer topics content manager on USA.gov. For more information on usability testing, visit the \u003ca href=\"http://www.digitalgov.gov/resources/digitalgov-user-experience-program/\"\u003eDigitalGov User Experience Program\u003c/a\u003e page or \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/snyk-fix-08ac0319715b31f28b1a7897cd249f39/communities/user-experience/\"\u003ejoin the DigitalGov User Experience Community of Practice.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}