Usability Test Report

1
Usability Test Report

• Elementary School Math Club
• in UTOPIA

By I-Fan Chou
2
Overview

• Introduction
• Objectives
• Test Procedure
• Task Design
• Participant Profile
• Results Summary
• Problems Recommendations
• Conclusion

3
Introduction

• Elementary School Math Club (ESMC) is a sub
  Website under UTOPIA protocol.
• ESMC provides five activities for PreK-3 and
• 4-8 elementary school teachers or parents to
  use as lesson plans.
• ESMC is designed for math educators and parents
  with elementary school kids in order to stimulate
  childrens mathematical curiosity.

4
Objectives

• Assessed the performance of target users using
  the current ESMC Website
• Detected any problems focusing on
• Navigation System
• Interface Design
• Labeling/language

5
Overview

• Introduction
• Objectives
• Test Procedure
• Task Design
• Participant Profile
• Results Summary
• Problems Recommendations
• Conclusion

6
Test Procedure

• IRB consent form Self-report background
  questionnaire
• Performance evaluation 10 tasks
• (Think aloud, timed, and video/audio
  recorded)
• Interview (Audio recorded)

7
Overview

• Introduction
• Objectives
• Test Procedure
• Task Design
• Participant Profile
• Results Summary
• Problems Recommendations
• Conclusion

8
Task Design

• Task 1 Locate ESMC with navigation
• system
• Task 2 Locate ESMC with search
• function
• Task 3 Find the About information of
• ESMC
• Task 4 Go to Math Mobile section

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Task Design (contd)

• Task 5 Find Lesson Duration
• Task 6 Find curriculum plan for lesson
• Task 7 Download lesson kit to the
• desktop
• Task 8 Find Distributive Law
• Task 9 Find Materials info
• Task 10 Send questions to ESMC

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Participant Profile

• 10 participants
• 8 math teachers for PreK-3 or 4-8
• 2 parents with elementary school kids
• 9 females 1 male

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Participant Profile (contd)

• All participants have basic Web capabilities
• 5 out of 10 have visited UTOPIA protocol
• 7 participants have used online tutorial tools

12
Overview

• Introduction
• Objectives
• Test Procedure
• Task Design
• Participant Profile
• Results Summary
• Problems Recommendations
• Conclusion

13
Results Summary

• 60 of the tasks had errors happened
• 40 of the participants completed tasks without
  making errors
• Task 3 (70) and Task 10 (80) had lower success
  rate than any other tasks
• T3 Find the About information of ESMC
• T10 Send questions to ESMC
• Confusion of universal navigation
  bar between ESMC and UTOPIA

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Results Summary (contd)

• Task 2 (117.5 sec.) has the longest time span in
  average for the participants to complete
• T2 Locate ESMC with search function
• Problems in search function
• Demo

15
Overview

• Introduction
• Objectives
• Test Procedure
• Task Design
• Participant Profile
• Results Summary
• Problems Recommendations
• Conclusion

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Problems Recommendations

• Navigation System
• Hard to locate ESMC
• Role settings vs. Local navigation bar
• URL is not easy for memorizing
• Bread crumb links do not help much
• Search results are sorted by categories ?
• add Sort by relevance function will help
• Confusion of universal navigation bar ?
• Move About and Help/FAQ of UTOPIA up

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Problems Recommendations (contd)

• Interface Design
• Entrance page
• Thats the huge problem, its misleading!
• Tell me what is this, dont make me click on
  everything to find out what it is ? Tool tips
  will help!
• Consistency
• Fonts
• Its really small, and no body wants to read
  that!
• Color
• Orange links?
• Blue headers?

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Problems Recommendations (contd)

• Labeling/language
• Not Teacher friendly language
• Not TEKS language
• ex. Platonic Solids ? Geometric Solid
• Ive never seen platonic solid until I saw
  here.
• Too complicated
• Not straightforward
• Too much redundant information
• Vague labeling terms
• The Math ? Math(ematical) Concepts/ Math Formula
• Number Paths, Guess the number-magic trick, The
  Human Counting Machine, A Math Mural

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Conclusion

• Modify the search function to serve users
  searching behavior
• Improve the navigation to locate ESMC from UTOPIA
• Decrease the confusion of universal navigation
  bar
• Match the Interface design with target users
  expectation

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Conclusion (contd)

• Improve consistency between entrance page and
  inside pages
• Change vague terms
• Add tool tips when users move the mouse over the
  graphics
• Revise the language to match TEKS language
• Enlarge the fonts deduct the content

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Any Questions?
Thank you!