Project 1 - Finding courses at UC Irvine Extension Deeksha Malhotra Liane Nakamura James Rose

Project Summary Users were asked to sign into UCI Extensions and locate their course sites Path of navigation was recorded Users questioned afterwards Collected and examined data to determine the overall ease of use

Problems Looked At Overall clarity of the UCI Extensions website Difficulties in navigation for new users Misinforming or out of place links

Methods Used Used Camtasia software to record on-screen activity Recorded audio of users “thinking out loud” Recorded length of time of experiments Followed up usability experiment with short interview to determine user’s thoughts on their experience

Tests Subjects 6 different subjects for our experiment Older subjects, all in the 47-55 year age range Differ in technical background and native language

Native English Speaker Results User Age Technical User Native English Speaker Time Length A 50  2:07 B 2:31 C 47  4:55 D 51 7:24 E 55 3:58 F 54 1:19

Results All users located their course site within the allotted 10 minutes Users without technical background struggled Non-technical users all took over 4 minutes. Technical users averaged 2 minutes. Hard to determine the impact of being a non-native English speaker. All non-native speakers were also non-technical users.

Observations Difficulties logging-in attributed to some of the longer times “My Courses” link went unnoticed by users. Seemed to blend into the myriad of links on the Extensions website.

User Feedback “My Courses” should be more clearly displayed Include link to a tutorial for new users (i.e. “Getting Started” link in clear view) Technical users can ignore it, go straight to “My Courses” Non-technical users that don’t know where to start can look at “Getting Started” to find out how to begin

Problem 1-Account Login The user login is hard to find on the page. It is located on the upper right hand side of the page, but it is too small. It needs to be bigger to be easier to find.

Problem 2-Finding the Spring classes One major complaint from our interview subjects is that to get to the Spring courses you must look at the sidebar. However, it is natural to search for the courses in the center of the page. The Spring courses link should be prominently displayed on the main page.

Mockups and Second Interviews We created mockups that solved both of these problems. These mockups were shown to our interviewees whose responses were recorded again.

Mockup for Account Login The account login button is more prominent on the upper right hand of the page

Mockup for Courses The “My Courses” button was taken out of the sidebar and placed in the center of the page.

Second Interview Feedback The account login and “My Courses” buttons are much easier to find. All interviewees who were interviewed so far were able to find the buttons on the mockup in less than 2 minutes.

Schedule Task Start Date End Date Time Estimate (in hours) Actual Time (in hours) Initial Research 4/7/09 4/21/09 3 Initial Presentation Preparation 4/17/09 6 Initial Presentation Interviews 4/27/09 5/7/09 Analyze Findings 5/4/09 5/12/09 15 4 Interim Presentation Preparation 5/8/09 9 Interim Presentation Create Mockup 5/13/09 5/21/09 12 2 Re-test Subjects 5/22/09 5/28/09 6/2/09 Final Presentation Preparation Final Presentation Final Report Preparation 6/9/09 18 Final Report Finals Week Total Hours 84

What is Left Second Interviews Final Report James, Liane In progress Google Docs