>> #Usability and User Experience (#UX) Report for the SJSU #iSchool Website...
Introduction
"If you want a great site, you’ve got to test. After you’ve worked on a site for even a few weeks, you can’t see it freshly any more. You know too much. The only way to find out if it really works is to test it." ― Steve Krug
Our Usability/UX research team evaluated the information needs alongside ongoing observational and EES (effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction) analysis to provide key data-driven insight into evaluating the overall online experience for the SJSU #iSchool website of four audience groups as targeted stakeholders – including: prospective students; current students; faculty; and alumni. This “Website Usability/UX Evaluation Report” serves to specifically highlight ongoing research results compiled from several prospective student interviews and surveys with a total sample size of N=136.
Methodology
The researcher randomly selected ten (n=10) respondents from a request form sent out via email correspondence to a small database selection of recent SJSU #iSchool Open House event attendees. Five (n=5) of these participants engaged in observational analysis and two (n=2) in EES (effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction) task-based analysis. Unfortunately, three (n=3) participants were “no shows” for the EES portion of this Usability/UX Study. In addition, a Qualtrics Survey was sent out to a larger targeted user group of current students asked to answer questions from the unique perspective of prospective students. The Qualtrics Survey received a total of n=129 responses from current students acting as proxy participants for prospective students.
Qualtrics Survey (n=129)
Natural Observation Interviews (n=5)
Usability EES “Task-Based” Scenario Testing (n=2)
Total Sample Size (N=136)
The researcher encountered some difficulty in recruiting enough participants in the EES testing portion of this Usability/UX Study. In addition, the Qualtrics Survey sent out to SJSU iSchool databases for current students (acting as proxy) failed to collect any “task-based” scenarios from the unique perspective of prospective students. Supplemental recruitment alternatives should be addressed to build additional internal databases for targeting this critical audience group to provide more data-driven insight with iterative testing and evaluation moving forward with ongoing Usability/UX initiatives.
Natural Observation Analysis
“Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” ― Frank Lloyd Wright
The observational portion of this Usability/UX Study included an in-depth analysis of five (n=5) prospective students selected at random from a database of SJSU #iSchool Open House participants.
>> Here is an overview of the instrumentation and documentation utilized in this portion of the study:
>> Key insights from reciprocal #dialogue in this investigation include:
Prospective Student 1: “Because I did web design for a lot for a long time, it would be nice if they were like to call them side-by-side with a responsive design, so that it becomes one column if you're on a phone versus forcing me to scroll and scroll and scroll because I'm on a desktop or laptop computer.”
Prospective Student 2: “I’m not a huge fan of a lot of text. It’s not broken up in a way to be very engaging to me. I would prefer different types of content for different ways of conveying information.”
Prospective Student 3: “I guess there are just a lot of the terms I’m unaware of exactly what they mean. Just because I haven't been in the program so far, I’m not as familiar with them, and I’m not taking courses yet. So, when there are terms on there about specific career pathways or different types of job titles, I'm not sure exactly what differentiates one from the other.”
Prospective Student 4: “The acronyms on the page could perhaps be defined somewhere on the site as a glossary of terms. This makes me feel down since I don’t know what these terms mean. It’s a little frustrating.”
Prospective Student 5: “I don’t know, nothing really stood out to me as major opportunities for improvement on the site. If I had to choose one, there is really so much information on the website taking up lots of eye real estate.”
Usability EES Testing Analysis
The EES (effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction) portion of this Usability/UX Study included analysis of two (n=2) prospective students selected at random from a database of SJSU #iSchool Open House participants. Unfortunately, three (n=3) of these candidates were “no shows” for the task-based scenarios – even with the ongoing encouragement of multiple Google calendar invites, email reminders, and requests for rescheduling.
>> Here is an overview of the instrumentation and documentation utilized in this portion of the study:
>> Key insights from reciprocal #dialogue in this investigation include:
Prospective Student 6: “So one thing I am very much liking about this website, both when I first on the website, but also the more I've been exploring today is that all of the web, all of the pages like nested are set up the same way, which makes them fairly straightforward to navigate once I understand how the system likes, how the page itself is designed. Uh huh, so like that they're sort of relying on the fact that there are always these menus here and they might not have all of the information I'm looking for, but they will expand or collapse as I need them to give me more detail, makes it much easier to navigate from section to section.”
Prospective Student 7:“I guess for my personal needs I’m just more of a visual learner and I get kind of I guess the word would be discouraged or appealed. It's unappealing when it's maybe some of the User interface of like the charts and the search like you know some other search bars are stylized to be more like nice and some of them are still at default like with when it's just html which kind of gives a feel of like really want to use it feels cold… I don't know why, but it made me feel like I didn't want to use it.”
Qualtrics Survey Analysis
“Usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology.” ― Steve Krug
The Qualtrics Survey portion of this Usability/UX Study was sent out to a larger targeted user group of current students asked to answer questions from the unique perspective of prospective students. The Qualtrics Survey received a total of n=129 responses from current students acting as proxy participants for prospective students. Added to the natural observation and EES sessions above, the total sample size comes to the grand sum of N=139.
>> Here is an overview of the documentation utilized in this portion of the study:
>> Key insights from reciprocal #dialogue in this investigation include:
Prospective Student A: “The #iSchool website is where I had to go to obtain more information about the program. The depth of information needed in an introductory zoom call is not sufficient. For me I went to the website because my main considerations were the cost of graduate school, the estimated time to complete the coursework, and the need for the college to be well regarded and accredited.”
Prospective Student B: “The most important reason I used the #iSchool website was because I was curious about the prospective career paths available to me upon graduation. It was important to look at class resources, like schedules and syllabi; it was also important to know how successful I would be at locating a job during or after the program.”
Prospective Student C: “When I was still in an initial exploratory/information-gathering phase of figuring out whether to pursue an MLIS, I first visited the SJSU #iSchool's site to read the MLIS Skills at Work: A Snapshot of Job Postings report (which is such a great resource!). Once I was actively considering MLIS programs and learned via ALA's website that SJSU's program is ALA accredited and fully online, I visited the #iSchool's site to learn about the MLIS program's admissions requirements, cost, and overall structure/format (i.e., length, online delivery, degree of flexibility). These were the most important factors for me when I was comparing programs.”
As previously mentioned, the researcher encountered some difficulty in recruiting enough participants in the EES testing portion of this Usability/UX Study. In addition, the Qualtrics Survey sent out to SJSU #iSchool databases for current students (acting as proxy) failed to collect any “task-based” scenarios (n=0) from the unique perspective of prospective students. These unfortunate events limit the overall efficacy of this report for providing evaluation of more in-depth analyses of this targeted user group; therefore, additional supplemental recruitment alternatives should be addressed to build more internal databases for targeting this critical audience group – ultimately allowing our Usability/UX to deliver more data-driven insight with ongoing iterative testing and evaluation moving forward with future Usability/UX initiatives.
Mobile App Initiative Proposal
Utilizing insight gleaned from the one-on-one interview sessions listed above, all of the observational participants unanimously agree on a collective interest in developing a mobile app for the SJSU #iSchool.
>> Key insights from reciprocal dialogue relating to the mobile app initiative:
Prospective Student 1: “Yeah, I mean I’d definitely use it, that would be really nice. I'm a part of several communities. I’m a community manager for some entrepreneurs and I'm a community manager for a group of travel women, and we use a program called Mighty Networks, and I love it because it lets you connect and meet people with like minds, so it'd be nice to have other people that are studying librarianship in the Community, but I could talk to, maybe see events and things that are coming up specifically.”
Prospective Student 2: “I love the idea of a mobile APP. I think that things like bill pay can be really useful through a mobile APP. I think a lot of people do mobile banking already um I think calendars could be really useful. I think it would be hard to do assignment submission that way. But you know, if the assignment was a video or something you could record yourself using your phone on the mobile APP faster than getting it to a laptop maybe. Um again, I love mobile Apps. I’m on my phone way more often than a laptop or desktop…um general communication like a chat function with others like with classmates or with professors. I think it could be useful.”
Prospective Student 3: “Definitely, if you were to be going on vacation or something with your family and you still wanted to be able to get your schoolwork done and to have it easily accessible, that would be pretty handy. I am a little dubious about that, though, because I feel like sometimes there can be like tech issues a lot more tech issues, sometimes with mobile Apps depending on your service… It could be really beneficial to make the program even more accessible in many more places.”
Prospective Student 4: “But one of the advantages about having the APP would be if I I don't have access to a computer right away that I am able to look at an APP sometimes. Information that is now on the APP is easier to read than when you're looking at the Web browser on safari or on Google chrome from your phone, so I think that would be great… If there were more in-depth things that I wanted to look at like what I was looking at today, I think would be most useful to actually go through the APP.”
Prospective Student 5: “Um, well if it fosters a sense of community, I would definitely use it, I personally think there should be alternatives to some of the social media platforms for educational groups and others. And I think it could be a way to build Community if people use it… Well, it could also be utilized to announce news and current events. Maybe it could be utilized sort of like a student Union type place where people could go and ask each other questions. You know, a virtual student Union.”
>> For more information about the Mobile Initiatives, please see the following: