ENGL 421

As the summer session is winding down, the final project, “How to Survive Purdue” guides, is nearing completion. Before the project is complete, all guides have to pass the usability test. The test is to determine if our guides are well-written. The members from our group spend the weekend to test most of our guides to get a good idea of how useful each of the guides is. Following are the methods and results of the usability test of our tutorials.

The usability test was successful. Most of the people, who had at least some use of PSpice Cadence / Orcad software, found the tutorial helpful. First time suggested some areas to change and add.

The testing was a great tool on how to change a document based on the perspective and the audience views on it. For example, some of the feedback suggested making it over twice as long and going even more in depth.

Usability Testing Experience

Evaluation of Methodology

The way that our usability testing was set up meant that there was actually very little interaction between the people testing the site and those conducting the tests. The testing was completed via an online form people filled out as they were surfing the site. The advantages to this method are as follows:

Purdue Web Space Tutorial
For the Purdue Web Space usability testing, we had a total of 3 subjects (1 to test out the usability test, and 2 additional ones).  The first subject was tested on Friday in class, had a little bit of HTML experience, and has created basic web pages before.  There were a few areas where the reader was confused.  These were in step two where it talked about the index.html file and redirecting, and adding an additional step at the end of the Macromedia site setup to click an additional “done” button.  It wasn’t until this person did the usability testing that we realized Isaac took the long and unnecessary route for someone who is using Dreamweaver on an ITaP (on campus connection) computer.  This prompted us to make two distinctions in Dreamweaver site setups, for those who are off campus and for those who are using ITaP computers on campus.  This makes it much easier to set up Dreamweaver if an individual is working from an ITaP lab.  Another suggestion that was used was breaking the tutorial up into 3 sections (background info, setting up site configuration in Dreamweaver, and creating pages).  Everything else looked good.  The usability test seemed to work well for producing feedback so we continued.

Top Three Goals for the Design of the Website

1. Fast Location of Information.
2. Easily Able to Navigate.
3. Pleasant Appearance.

Fast Location of Information

Users have to be able to quickly find the tutorial that best suites what they are looking for. If the information is not readily accessible users may migrate away from the page, which would not serve the purpose of educating people about surviving Purdue. This is the reason that it is top on our list.

This usability test is designed to improve the tutorial to move your Purdue emails. You’ll be asked to take short series of question before, during and after the testing to make this tutorial as efficient and user-friendly as possible.

This is a usability test to determine how efficient this tutorial is in assisting the setup of a personal Purdue website. The goal is to figure out how this tutorial can be improved to make the process of setting up a web site on the Purdue server simpler and easy to follow.

Before Using Tutorial:

How much do you know about web pages?

1. Nothing at all
2. A few things about HTML
3. Proficient in HTML
4. Everything there is to know

Have you ever created a web page before?

The following attachment contains a word document of the PSpice Cadence / Orcad Usability Test.

Surviving Purdue is the current title of the project website. While this would make a fine title it is the CMS's task to explore all other possibilities. Listed are a few ideas:

• Surviving Purdue
• Boilermaker Survival Guide
• Purdue Tutorial Guide
• Making it at Purdue
• Making Life Easy at Purdue

The idea behind these is not necessarily to pick from them as a class, but instead to use them as a springboard for other ideas. More class input will be needed not only to come up with a great title, but get buy-in from the people that are working on the project.

Title

Surviving Purdue is the current title of the project website. While this would make a fine title it is the CMS's task to explore all other possibilities. Listed are a few ideas:

• Surviving Purdue
• Boilermaker Survival Guide
• Purdue Tutorial Guide
• Making it at Purdue
• Making Life Easy at Purdue

The idea behind these is not necessarily to pick from them as a class, but instead to use them as a springboard for other ideas. More class input will be needed not only to come up with a great title, but get buy-in from the people that are working on the project.