Last Usability Test

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 class evaluation
From this evaluation we found that it wasn't clear why the "Always Linked" button refereed to. This is the second time a user mentions the same thing so we will definitely be changing it to something more descriptive. So far we might be changing it to "relevant links" or maybe just "links".  According to the user, everything else was clear and the layout was consistent. Even though she had no trouble locating the contact information we want to add a still footer to the layout. That way the contact information would be always in view.  She also mentioned how she would definitely use the site for bigger lectures. We might change the site description to make it more concise. The user felt that the description paragraph was too long and she probably wouldn't read it. In general, she thought that the layout was clear, consistent, and the website very useful.

Updated Usability Testing Script_02

Welcome

Welcome to the usability evaluation of Flip Side! 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 up for this site and then sign in
2) Look for information about this site

3) Look for discussion messages within your Design 5405 class

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

7) Complete any other task of your choosing
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?

Conclusion From 1st Evaluation:
Subject: R.H.
Major: Classics (full time transfer at OSU)

The first usability test was not the best, as R.H. was unfamiliar with the interface of the computer used for testing (a MacBook Pro). He did not wait until the questions were asked, but went on with exploring the site. He had relatively low standards for evaluation; he said that the site was good because all the links worked and led to the right places, and that content was missing but that this is ok because he can tell that the information will be filled in.

Conclusions From 2nd Evaluation:
Subject: E.C.
Major: Computer science (on and off student at community college)

 The unfinished nature of our site comes to the fore; E.C. asked why there was a floating [logo] in front of the logo. He was confused by the sign-in, because he didn't know what the site was.

He was unsure whether the relevant videos could be found under Discussion or Class Links.

He pointed out that the discussion comment box lacked a submission button...

There was a bit of hesitation before clicking into Private Chat for the project group discussion. "We meet again, Person 1," quipped our subject.

The logout was self-explanatory.

Our subject would not find our site useful because there are more specific sites for most of the topics he has. He said that navigation was easy and fairly well labeled. The layout was too wide for his taste; he thinks that spreading things across three columns is too wide of a layout and is unnecessary. The two sets of links bars (the class-specific tabs and the sidebar links) are somewhat confusing.





Conclusions From Third Evaluation:
Subject: J.C.
Majors: Political Science, Security and Intelligence, full time transfer

Without context, J.C. was confused ("I have not signed up for this witchcraft"). He said the button did not jump out at him.

The most obvious part of the homepage is the classes; the user skipped ahead before I asked him to look up information about the site. (Looking up the information about the site did not seem relevant to him, so he didn't).

When I asked him to look up a video, he could not find a video (because the site did not have an actual video). He looked in other classes, but to no avail. (Testing incomplete products has its hazards.) The (class) materials links was somewhat unclear, I think.

J.C. would have found the site useful at a different time, when he had groups that he wanted to work closely with (he does not like being in constant contact with work associates).

The unselected links were somewhat hard to see (the colors "did not jump out" at him). Navigation itself was fine. The site is fairly well designed and he can find things once he notices that a link is there.

Conclusions from 4th evaluation 
Subject: Tony
Major: Non-traditional extended learning student (Statistical analysis studies)

Tony liked the colors chosen for the site. He thought the navigation was pretty straightforward. When asked about the organization of the site, he said that the organization some pages maybe could be a little better. For example, he noted that on the Links page the 'search' and 'add new' buttons maybe could be smaller and off to the side, in order to highlight the 'top-viewed' videos. We asked what he thought about the idea of creating a default page (such as 'discussions') when clicking on a class, and he said it is better the way that it is, since you may sometimes want a different page first. He also noted that it would be a good idea to put notifications of updates, such as when you receive new messages or new links or posted (and that maybe these notifications can be turned off if the user so chooses.) In conclusion, if we want to make this site more organized for the user, we will change the layout of some of the pages in order to highlight important and useful information. Also, if we wish to make the site as useful as possible, we will create notifications for the updates.

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. 

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.

Wireframes

Log in page:

Home page:

Class Discussion:

Class - Materials:

Class - Linked:

Private group chat:

About us:

Buy/Sell Materials:

Linked:

Paper Wireframes

Home page:

Class page: