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

2. 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

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

4. 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

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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

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

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

15. 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.

16. 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

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