Updated Usability Testing 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 Log in as a guest
2) Look for information about this site

3) Click in one of the classes that you have previously added

4) Look for class specific materials
5) Looked for videos relevant to your class
6) Engage in a discussion with all your classmates
7) Engage in a discussion with your project group

8) Please log out

Questionnaire

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

2) Did you have trouble navigating the site?
3) Did you feel like you had to leave our site at any point to look for additional information somewhere else?

4) How do you feel about the layout?

5) Are there any parts of the site that are confusing to you?

6) Do you have any additional comments or suggestions?

Conclusions from 1st evaluation
From this evaluation we found that it wasn't clear why the "About" link and the "Contact us" link led to the same page. We might want to divide the information into two separate pages or eliminate one of the tabs. We would also like to relocate these tabs to the bottom of the page into a footer, that would show up on every page. This might help the main navigation be more clear, if there are less tabs to choose from. The user encountered a blank page when she selected her class, and then had to select one of the tabs to choose what she wanted to do. From this, we realized it would be useful to make one of the tabs a default, which would show up automatically after selecting a class. We decided that the "Class Discussion" tab should be the default tab, since it would most likely be the most used tab.

Conclusions from 2nd evaluation
From this evaluation we found that the syntax of some of the tabs were confusing. In order to make it more understandable, we might want to change the "Always Linked" tab to be called "Relevant Links" or "Useful links". The user found that the navigation was understandable for the most part, and that the other links made sense. She also commented that a collaboration site might have been useful to her during her first couple years of college, but as a senior student she would not use it. For this reason, we should redirect our focus on 1st or 2nd year students or students that have classes with large lectures. We might also focus attention on transfer students. The user also liked being able to log in as a "guest" so that she didn't have to create an account in order to view the site.

Plan for Usability Testing

Our target audience is the student population at OSU, so we will look for random students on campus who would be willing to test our wireframe. 

There are many ways to solicit these individuals to take the usability test. As a start, we will be sending emails to all our classmates from all the classes we are taking this semester. All three of us have different majors and classes so we would be reaching a wide range of students with different interests, such as business, arts, engineering, english, and design. Secondly, we will be sending messages on Facebook to the friends we know attend OSU. And finally, we will be approaching students personally with a laptop on the Oval. That way we can achieve a wide range of tests from different perspectives. 

Since the paper-prototype version of the website, the only thing we really changed were the side tabs we had which sat vertically on the page. We realized that it was hard to read the vertical text and that it would be easier for the user if we moved the respective tabs to the top of the page with regular horizontal text instead. 

After the paper wireframe exercise done in class we were able to further observe that there was indeed a certain level of discomfort when students tried to read the tabs vertically. That wouldn't change our script, however, our design layout changed a little. As mentioned before, we moved the side tabs to the top of the page.