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

2. 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)

3. Problems Being Addressed
Ease of use: How difficult is it for the user to find what they’re 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?

5. Problems Being Addressed
Can be addressed by looking at:
Simplicity
Redundancy
Links clearly indicating their destination

6. 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)

7. Methods to be Used Interviews
Will follow up the usability experiments with a short interview
Find out the user’s 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

8. What We’ve 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

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

10. 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.

11. 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

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

13. 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

14. Updated Schedule We’re 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
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

15. Upcoming Schedule All tasks will be completed by each group member
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
6/2/09 6
Final Presentation Preparation 9
Final Presentation
Final Report Preparation
6/9/09 18
Final Report
Finals Week
Notes:
Milestones are depicted in red