Usability Evaluation Script

Welcome

Welcome to the usability evaluation of hub squared. Thank you for taking time to be a part of this evaluation. My name is ________. We're working on the design of this site and want to identify usability issues. We're testing the site, not you. There are no wrong answers so feel free to speak freely about the site. I'm going to ask you to complete a series of tasks which will take about 20 min. I'll be asking you to please think aloud as you work, saying what you are thinking and how you think the site functions. This is voluntary and you can stop at any time. Do you have any questions before we begin?

Tasks

1) Please sign in

2) Add a Psychology 100 class

3) Add a discussion question within your Design class

4) Search for a linked video about usability testing

5) Please search for a book for your Business Management class

6) Please log out

Questionnaire

1) Do you think a collaboration website would be useful to you?

2) How do you feel about the navigation of the site?

3) How do you feel about the layout?

4) What task was most difficult for you?

5) Do you have any additional comments or suggestions?

Conclusions

Even before the usability test proper, we noticed problems with our site. In our zeal, we had omitted the Class Search/Add page.

The front page apparently gives no indication as to the purpose of the website. If the user is to know what our website is about, we should add a description on the homepage.

We asked the user to add a class site; she thought that the Department and the Class number search bars were for entering parts of the same class abbreviation (e.g. that she was to choose Psychology for the department and 1001 for the class number). Our search bars were meant to be separate; the Department drop down list allows users to search by department (e.g. find all results within the Psych department); the Class search list allows the user to find all results in a particular class. To make this clearer, we could add an example above the class search bar.

The user was not sure how to add a new discussion topic because our page did not have a button to press to add a discussion topic. Additionally, the user was unclear on which functions were possible on the discussions page; if our audience is to understand what’s going on, we need to make the different functions clearer.

The Always Linked page was straightforward.

We asked the user to search for a book. The Materials tab is easily found, but the search format is unclear (department? title? ISBN?). This will be more clear if we clarify the preferred format(s) above the search bar.

The logout and overall navigation made sense overall. The user asked what the difference was between searching for materials in the class tab and using the main search bar. We think that the site would be improved by only keeping the contents of a class in the box, as this will visually distinguish between activities done within a class and other searches/activities on the site.