Usability Report 1

Working title: Yangtze River Dam: Promise or Threat?
Report Author: Susan Connell
Date: 20 April 2003

Brief Profile of Users

I observed and interviewed four people for this usability study. Two were high school students who were reasonably computer literate. The others were adults „ one a 43-year old IT Manager and the other a 74-year old retired Engineer. Both were internet savvy. None were familiar with the WebQuest format. Operating systems and browsers used were Mac OS9.2.2 with Internet Explorer 5.1, Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows 2000 with Internet Explorer 6 and Mac OS10.2.5 with Safari beta2.

Think Aloud Task

The subjects were asked to locate a link to another website that discussed engineering aspects of the dam project.

Summary of Think Aloud

• All users found the link to the engineering site relatively easily.
• One suggested that having subheadings for the different categories of links on each page where there were lists of links would make the task even easier.
• Another thought that some sort of visual clue such as an icon might be helpful.
• Three of the four subjects felt that it would be useful to have a one or two sentence description about the content of each link, especially since some of the titles for different sites were very similar. The fourth did not want to have to read any more than absolutely necessary.
• Two of the users used the ENTER link on the front page to delve into the site and two used the navigation links at the bottom of the front page. Once inside, they all tended to use the links in the body of the page rather than those in the navigation areas to the left or bottom of the page.

Summary of Posttest

• Three of the users had to make browser windows larger to see all of the text without scrolling sideways.
• The Windows 95 user had a small monitor and could not see the entire width of the screen even after enlarging the window.
• Three of the users pointed out that the links to other sites should open in a new window so that they did not lose the original site.
• All but the Mac OS10.2 user had inconsistent typefaces appearing on most pages with serif and sans serif type of different sizes.
• All of the subjects liked the notebook metaphor and thought it would be nice to have more graphics on the pages.

Findings to be Implemented

• Add subheads to the lists of links on the sub-pages and will probably add descriptions to each of those links if time allows
• Make the tables that contain the page content a little bit narrower so that people don't have to enlarge their browser windows and so that students who might have smaller monitors don't have to scroll to the right.
• Make all links off the site open in new windows. [I had intended to do this and forgot.]
  Troubleshoot why the typefaces appear differently on different systems and try to correct.
• Will add more graphics as the site is further developed.

Findings that will not be Implemented

Although having icons for the resource links would be a nice touch, it would take a lot of time to find or create them so I will probably not do that at this time.