Archive for the 'Usability' Category

Usability Testing: University of Akron

May 8, 2008 on 2:07 am | By Chris Chapman | In TKG, Usability | No Comments

We all can take a best guess at how our target audiences use our sites /applications. Focus groups help to tear apart a larger site with many cross links and lots of information and show where the weak points are in the flow of the user’s experience.

Today The Karcher Group will be pilot testing a usability test welcome to the department of redundancy department on The University of Akron’s Website with the help of the University of Akron and the Morae software package. It is a handy app that allows helps us monitor a test group of users’ interactions while accomplishing several defined tasks.

The tasks we have set up for the users are :

  1. Navigate to the main Akron University website
  2. From the homepage, locate the course curriculum for the program of Graphic Design
  3. From this location, determine the Financial Aid contact information
  4. From this location, locate where to apply online

The tasks seem simple enough but what we are measuring is what actually paths the test users are taking though the site and sub sites to get to complete each task. After the data is obtained we will use some additional features in Morae to present this data and determine just how many users found the optimal path, which found unique paths, and if any were unable to complete the tasks.

Results and breakdown analysis to follow up after completion.

Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS.