Usability Report 1

Working Title:    Avocado Elementary School Web Site
Report Author:    Joshua S. Bleier
Date:                   November 16, 2002

Brief Profile of Users
I observed 3 students from our class, a parent of 2 children at Avocado, a teacher at Avocado, and the Avocado school Principal.

Think Aloud Task
Before taking a general tour of the Avocado pages, users were asked to perform 3 specific tasks:

Find the Assignments for students of Ms. Kathy’s class,

Obtain the time that PM Kindergarteners got out, and

Locate SAT9 Scores of 2^nd Graders for 1999.

Summary of Think Aloud
All users were able to navigate directly to the appropriate information without getting lost or following non-optimal paths.

This clearly has more to do with the shallowness of the site rather than the site’s usability. The farthest a user has to drill down is 2 levels; almost everything is either one level down, or at the top.

Most of the user’s thoughts about the site concerned aesthetics; the overall look of the site, the color scheme, the size of the fonts, and the use of images. However, some important issues came to light during the think alouds:

The most important part of the PTA page should not be the current membership, but some method to allow parents to become members.

There is no easy way to get to Teachers or PTA members buried within their respective pages.

2 critical usability issues (Readability vs. Ease of Navigation) are in conflict on the calendar page. Users find it much easier to navigate a calendar page that looks like a month-to-month wall calendar. However, in order to fit the calendar onto the screen, the text has to be shrunk down to an almost unreadable size.

Summary of Post Test
One user was adamant about increasing the site’s overall font size to improve readability. Other users commented about how the dull gray background needed to be swapped for something livelier. Most users felt very strongly that a month-to-month calendar was superior to a serial listing of events. Users also commented on the possibility of incorporating district and county performance data into the SAT 9 Scores page.

Findings to be Implemented
The suggestion to allow for direct navigation to Teachers and PTA members makes sense. Hypertext links to each Teacher and PTA member at the top of the corresponding pages should solve this problem.

At the top of the PTA Page, a link will be added to bring up a membership/information form that interested parents can fill out and submit.

Finally, links to the school lunch menu, published on the district’s pages, will be added to the Daily Schedule page.

Findings that will not be implemented
A couple of users requested that the current day should be highlighted on the calendar page. While this is a good idea, it would be extremely difficult to implement; I would either have to construct the calendar dynamically, or I would have to update the calendar page every day.