Testing Methods Used to Conduct the Inspection of Website - Assignment Example

106CR Designing for Usability Assignment 2 Analyze the Coventry University Students Union website, http://www.cusu.org. 1. A description of the testing Methods that you used to conduct the inspection. TIP: Be specific – How did you conduct the tests? What tasks did you test? How did you measure whether each task was passed or failed? Who were your test participants? What equipment did you use? (130 words) The tests were conducted by having three (3) different participants find three (3) different aspects on the site. The participants from the audience had to find: details about Rag Week 2011; where to place comments or complaints; and how to find out about the 24 Hour Badminton Fundraiser. I measured whether each task was passed or failed by asking the participants to tell me how long it took to find the necessary links. If it took more than 5 seconds to find any of the links on the page, it was a fail. Any link that took under 5 seconds to locate was a pass. The test participants were two guys and one girl. The equipment that was used were four Macintosh MacBook laptops equipped with mice and mouse pads. 2. Describe, clearly, what parameters of usability you were testing for. E.g. effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction or learnability – Describe how you measured these parameters in your test. Describe how you measured whether a usability problem was trivial or significant. (470 words) The parameter of usability that was being tested for was basically efficiency. Effectiveness, satisfaction, and learnability were not necessarily what were taken into account, basically because the idea was that, if a person could not efficiently use the website (read: quickly), they might be more apt to go visit another website instead. What any website wants is more traffic. Obviously, the Coventry University Student Union is no different in that regard. I measured this usability problem as being trivial or significant by asking each participant in the study, “How important is it to you—on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important—that a website you visit be easily navigable?” One-hundred percent of study participants responded that they thought it rated ‘10’. One user blatantly said, “I had such a hard time finding out where the Rag Week 2011 link was, I just ultimately gave up after like 20 seconds.” The other two study participants reiterated similar thoughts. “Sorry, I didn’t find it.” “I didn’t bother looking for the link after the 5 seconds was up.” Such results were indicative that the problem in finding the link, which was buried in the middle of the page in small type, was a significant detractor. Finding the comments and complaints section of the website was the easiest part of the entire website to locate. This was due to the fact that when one opens the website, it is automatically visible that there is a big red button on the right side of the page, and that it is an automatic visual target that draws in the reader’s attention, making the reader want to read what it is that happens if one “pushes the button.” One-hundred percent of participants found that this was the easiest link to find, and was therefore significant because of the ease with which it was found. The usability of the 24 Hour Badminton Fundraiser was less than that of the red button advertising the comments or complaints section, but greater than that of the difficulty had in trying to find the Rag Week 2011 link. This was considered trivial by two participants until one participant disagreed, saying, “Out of the many problematic links on the site, the fundraiser might have been one activity that people outside of the Student Union might have had interest in. Luckily, it was featured on the main page in way that had a high usability and accessibility—but how much more could it have raised for charity if the link to the Fundraiser were embedded into a big red button to push? That would have gotten a lot of people interested in the charity event. I guess it depends on where the Student Union’s priorities are focused.” The student comments will definitely be considered to help the Student Union. 3. A description of the significant usability issues that you found. You are not going to be able to cover every aspect of your chosen site’s usability. Therefore you should concentrate on the significant usability issues. What problems did you (or your test subjects, if you are carrying out a formal user test) encounter when trying to complete the test tasks? (320 words) The most significant usability issue that seemed to be problematic was that the Student Union seemed more focused on getting everyone’s opinions and complaints rather than promoting not only the facts of what was happening at Rag Week 2011, but also highlighted the fact that the charity function of the 24 Hour Badminton Fundraiser didn’t get a link that was much more highly visible than Rag Week 2011. On one hand, this could be seen as a social faux pas, but on the other hand, it is most likely that the CUSU is playing into the hands of students. It realizes that students are self-centered and are probably looking out for their own self-interests. Thus, highlighting a big red button to have students tell the Student Union what they think personalizes the site and makes it more user-friendly. Of course, this could all be totally innocuous. However, on the other hand, it could also signal a basic lack of interest on the part of students in order to do charity work and/or participate in student functions such as Rag Week 2011. Problems that were encountered in carrying out formal user tests were that the tester did not conduct the tests with an actual timer, but rather asked the participant users to roughly estimate whether it took themselves 5 seconds or more in order to find a certain link. This is perhaps not a scientifically ideal setup, however, the cost that would have been incurred in order to buy timers, have extra people recruited to set off the timers, and coordinating 9 different tests (3 tests apiece for 3 people) would have been time-consuming and difficult. The point is that the test tasks were obviously simple, but the problems that were encountered were mainly usability issues. Although technical issues were simplified by having the participant users time themselves, it is acknowledged that this was not a highly-scientific method of inquiry forthwith. 4. A brief set of SPECIFIC recommendations for improving the site’s usability. Based on your background research and focusing on the significant problems found on your chosen site. Please avoid general recommendations like “improve the colour” or “use better fonts”. (300 words) 1. Focus on the Student Union’s priorities and advertise them plainly. It is not sure whether the focus of the Student Union’s site is promoting charity or hearing student comments and complaints. The Student Union should decide what kind of overall message it wants to convey about its Student Union. Does it want to focus upon the self-interested opinions and complaints of its loyal rank-and-file? Does it want to highlight charitable activities? Does it want to promote on-campus activities like Rag Week 2011? The Student Union should figure out what its priorities are and then advertise them in plain view without any obstructions. 2. Make the site visually navigable. One of the greatest problems with the site was that, once one landed on the actual webpage, one’s line of sight is literally drawn everywhere. One’s line of sight is so unfocused that basically one first sees a red button, then a bunk of links in small- and medium-sized fonts which are essentially unreadable or difficult to read for people who have difficulty seeing small print. The site must be made more uniform and not have such a crazy layout. 3. Have a website design expert design the site. It is unsure who designed the site, but whoever did design it did an atrocious job. The main issue is that usability is poor due to the fact that everything on the site is basically poorly organized and executed. The text in links are small and difficult to read, for the most part. The important link for the Student Union, the comments and complaints section, is a red button in exaggerated size. This takes up much of the real estate of the website that could be used to enhance the other features of the site, such as the 24 Hour Badminton Fundraiser. 5. A brief reflection on the usefulness of the method you chose. Assess how successful the method is at highlighting usability problems in your target website, discuss the validity of the data your method produces, identify any difficulties that using the method presents. (260 words) The usefulness of the method that was chosen might be a bit dubious, especially because participant users themselves had to estimate whether it took 5 seconds or more to find a link on the site. With regard to highlighting usability problems, it is estimated that this study was very accurate in gaining a fair picture of how efficiently the website is navigable. The validity of the data is probably not high, especially because the method used was not completely scientific in terms of having been timed by a timer. This relied on the independent observations of users. Also, another factor that probably will affect the results of this study is because, realistically speaking, the requested sample size of three people as study subjects is not statistically significant. A statistically significant sample of the population would be 30 people at least. Difficulties of using this method include the fact that the participants of the study could have lied about their results or could have exaggerated about what they were told to observe. It is not clear what reason participants would have to lie about what they reported. However, a competing student group within Coventry University, or a competing university—and its members and attendees—might have personal reasons for wanting to give negative feedback, in order to gain some measure of popularity in contra of their adversaries. However, this is not highly likely nor highly feasible. It is recommended that a more scientifically reliable method of calculating reaction times of the efficiency of usability might be eventually used in future testing. WORKS CITED Coventry University Students Union Web Site. Retrieved 21 March 2011. Online. Available: . Read More