Project 1 - Finding courses at UC Irvine Extension

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Project 1 - Finding courses at UC Irvine Extension

• Deeksha Malhotra
• Liana Nakamura
• James Rose

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Project 1

• Conducting usability study
• Subjects are asked to sign in at UCI Extension
  website
• Locate the courses for which they had registered
• Studying navigation issues only (not content)

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Problems Being Addressed

• Ease of use How difficult is it for the user to
  find what theyre looking for?
• Intuitiveness Can users find their course site
  without any outside help?
• Navigability How simple or arduous is it to
  navigate the UCI Extensions website?
• Time spent How long did it take the user to find
  their course site?

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Problems Being Addressed

• Can be addressed by looking at
• Simplicity
• Redundancy
• Links clearly indicating their destination

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Methods to be Used

• Usability Experiment
• Users will attempt to navigate from their account
  on UCI Extensions to their course site
• Users will think aloud, and their actions and
  voice will be recorded and timed
• Approx. 6 different users
• 10 minutes in length (or until the goal is
  completed)
• Different demographics (i.e. nontechnical users,
  non-native speakers)

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Methods to be Used

• Interviews
• Will follow up the usability experiments with a
  short interview
• Find out the users impressions of the website
• Examine any problems they encountered, and why
  they encountered them
• Ask for any recommended changes
• Gather any other feedback they care to provide

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What Weve Done

• Gone through the UCI Extensions website to
  examine the issues firsthand
• Each conducted a usability experiment on
  different users
• Interviewed the users to find additional
  information about usability issues

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Insights

• Every person interviewed has been able to find
  the courses in the 10 minutes given.

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Insights (continued)

• 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.

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Insights (continued)

• The user login is hard to find on the page. It
  is located on the upper right hand side of the
  page, but it should be located in a more central
  location

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Problems

• I ran into technical difficulties with the sound
  on Camtasia Studio but was able to fix it by
  using a different microphone.

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Upcoming Decisions

• Need to develop a plan for creating a mockup
• What changes need to be made?
• My Courses link
• Login
• Delegate tasks
• Final Report

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Updated Schedule

• Were on schedule
• As of today

Task Start Date End Date Time Estimate (in hours) Actual Time (in hours)
Initial Research 4/7/09 4/21/09 3 3
Initial Presentation Preparation 4/17/09 4/21/09 6 3
Initial Presentation 4/21/09
Interviews 4/27/09 5/7/09 3 3
Analyze Findings 5/4/09 5/12/09 15 4
Interim Presentation Preparation 5/8/09 5/12/09 9 3
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Upcoming Schedule

• All tasks will be completed by each group member

Task Start Date End Date Time Estimate (in hours)
Create Mockup 5/13/09 5/21/09 12
Re-test Subjects 5/22/09 5/28/09 3
Analyze Findings 5/28/09 6/2/09 6
Final Presentation Preparation 5/28/09 6/2/09 9
Final Presentation 6/2/09
Final Report Preparation 6/2/09 6/9/09 18
Final Report Finals Week


Notes
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