1. User Research Goals Memorability/Desirability Usability
Useful Features
Effectiveness
Adoption
Round 1 – Pre-Survey, Usability Testing
Round 2 – Diaries, Pre & Post Tests, Analytics, & Interviews
Before determining our overall research methodology we first identified the key areas that we thought we needed to probe and our ultimate research goals.
These included:
Memorability/Desirability
Usability
Useful Features
Effectiveness
Adoption
Our questions about these areas drove our selection of our evaluation techniques.
Out of Scope for this phase

2. Round 1 Study Participants Methodology Pre-Round Survey
Usability Testing
Follow-up Usability Test
Would like to show picture of us conducting
usability test here if we can capture
a picture from the video….
Study Participants
Recruited eight dyad sets - eleven parents and twelve tweens/teens to support our user research. However, during this phase of the project we focused primarily on parents.
Pre-Round Survey
Surveyed 11 parents and 12 teens to prioritize areas of interest
80% of the parents and 70% of the tweens/teens interested in Money Management – So this is the area we focused on in our prototype.
Usability Testing
Developed script detailing specific actions we would observe users completing.
Conducted usability tests with xx parents and x tween
We video taped most testing sessions. However, We also conducted several written tests to access remote participants.
Follow-up Usability Test/Survey
Completed a follow-on usability test via to validate changes made resulting from our initial usability test.

3. Show original version of prototype here….
Here is our initial site that was used to conduct our initial usability test. As you can see we populated the Money Management section.
Our users provided us interesting feedback on Visuals, Navigation, and features.
Visuals
Liked simplicity of layout
Liked colors
Disliked amount of white space
Mixed reaction on graphics
Not drawn immediately to key content
Navigation
Two many steps
Contents of topic areas not obvious
Ignored breadcrumbs
Disliked scrolling
Disliked long lists of topics
Confused by Fun Stuff tab
Features
Income and Careers did not connect with users
Hot Topics drew too much attention
Poll was ignored by everyone
My Profile confused everyone
News was not what users wanted
Fun Stuff links not indicative of what they are
Requested:
Help feature, Glossary, Home button
So what does all this mean….?

4. Show updated version of prototype here….Home Page
Walk through key changes on home page….
Visual Presentation
The new site uses more colors and images to increase visual impact and draw the eye to the more important areas of the page. In particular, we added this graphic banner that describes how to use the different sections of the site.
We removed graphics from the front page that users did like and filled the white space surrounding the content with a patterned background.
Navigation and Site Structure
One of the major issues with the original site is that the navigation required multiple clicks to get to key content.
So we replaced this navigation layout with a topical navigation layout. The topics of Money Management, Credit & Debt, Planning for College, Investing, and Economics became the new navigation buttons. The section “Income and Careers” was also replaced with “Planning for College”.
Each button now includes a sub-menu of subtopics for each section. This makes it clearer to users what can be found in each section, and allows direct access to a topic of interest. This also got rid of the long lists that our users disliked.
We also added a Home button and removed breadcrumbs.
We found that users' were drawn immediately to the "Hot Topics" area and they assumed this was where the bulk of the content could be found. So we changed the columns that were formerly "Teach Yourself" and "Teach Your Kids" to:
- "Most Popular Articles", implying that this is only a sample of what the site has to offer.
- "Teach Your Kids" became the new "Fun Activities" section, with text indicating it was only a sample of what is available on the site.
We replaced the old news section with a "What's New" on the site which was requested by several of our users.
As users could not understand the "My Profile" feature of the site we replaced the old "Fun Stuff" box on the far right with a new "Create a Custom Lesson Plan" section. This explains the custom lesson plan and provides easier access to logging into this feature.
Talk about 1.5
Now I will turn it over to Debbie to talk about Round 2.

5. Show updated version of prototype here….2nd level
…And then 3rd level
2nd level - Money Management - Budgeting
Teach Yourself and corresponding Teach Your Kids articles are now presented side-by-side for faster browsing.
We changed the name of “Fun Stuff” to “Fun Activities” which is also included next to the related content making the links easier to understand. This also eliminated the need to scroll through a long list of unrelated activities.
3rd level – Article
A new third level layout was designed for each of the articles. The content area includes the article on the left and a space for images and call-outs on the right.

6. Follow-up Usability Testing
We had several of our original usability participants conduct a follow-up usability test/survey on the new site compared to the original version. Overall the findings on the new site were very positive. All agreed the new layout was a design improvement over the original site. Users found it much easier to find information that the navigation was much more intuitive.
Words used to describe the new site included "clean", "clearer", "colorful", "inviting", "better organized", "balanced", "user friendly", "simplified", and "well presented".
Now I will turn it over to Debbie to talk about Round 2.