>> Observational Notes from the Field for Practice Activity #1 with the Ongoing Usability/UX Study at the #iSchool Website...
Website: https://ischool.sjsu.edu/
Usability Testing Notes:
“The accessibility problems of today are the mainstream breakthroughs of tomorrow.” ― Eve Andersson.
>> Target Audience
The target audience for the SJSU #iSchool website include: prospective and future students; current students; school alumni; faculty and staff; job seekers; as well as other general audience stakeholders – such as investors, institutional partners, other university professors and academic colleagues.
>> Design Plan
The #iSchool page seems to follow a good design plan. The overall aesthetic is very clean and pleasing to the eye. Each section is clearly delineated with well-defined Calls-to-Action and several highlighted activities to encourage ease of user click throughs. The “Information is Everything” drop down menu selections help students to readily “Find Your Program” for more information on the school offerings. The header and footer navigational aids are great; however, the hamburger menu provides a few challenges to the more general user. In addition, the site design is web responsive to well accommodate user’s mobile devices.
>> Language/Vocabulary
The language and #vocabulary on the site are fairly straight-forward to appeal to a wide-ranging general audience. However, some of the projected programs and career pathways highlight some less common vocabulary, such as informatics and data visualization. Some insider acronyms utilized on the site, such as MLIS, MARA, and “RIM Jobs Offer the Highest Salaries” news headline item may be problematic for some.
>> Website Goals
The core articulated #goals of the SJSU School of Information website are to strive to assist the learning institution to become “a global leader in education delivering innovative research and top quality programs in the information professions.” Furthermore, in support of the University’s broader mission, the School of Information web page “educates information professionals who contribute to the well-being of our global communities, and expands the knowledge base of the information professions through research and scholarship.” Lofty ambitions that require addressing the highlighted key user insights – ultimately moving towards improving overall design and functionality.
>> Navigation Challenges
The main #navigation challenges are found once the user delves deeper into the website. So much detailed information is included within the myriad of pages on this site that the user is often forced to either create multiple bookmarks and/or customized spreadsheets of pertinent user hyperlinks to serve as a replacement for clearly delineated site breadcrumbs. In addition, the basic search function bar might be a little hidden for the general user to readily find. Drop-down menus require some amount of scrolling to access the multiple options provided on the site which also needs to be addressed.
>> Technologies Utilized
The website is designed in a #Drupal CMS format with custom CSS style sheets – as well as Google analytics insight and tag management, Facebook pixel codes, live chatting capabilities, custom web design themes and JavaScript coding.
>> Interest-Piqued Test
The #interest of the general user is definitely piqued with the inviting alumni photos that directly engage the viewer with purposeful direct eye-contact and warm smiles. These aren’t boring, run-of-the-mill stock photographs – but portraits of real-world alumni highlighting diversity, equity, and inclusion to encourage a feeling of having an intimate “person-organization fit” for ongoing recruitment purposes – highlighting the new tagline “high-tech, high-touch, high-quality” for an very inclusive, familial vibe.
>> Browsability
On the surface, the #browsability of this site seems rather clean. However, on a deeper dive into the rich content – users can become overly frustrated to readily find what they are looking for when trying to complete more complex high information priority tasks. In addition, the search function bar at the top of the page lacks more robust algorithms to provide salient results to some basic user queries for browsing the site. Many students prefer searching via an external search engine like Google to reliably find pertinent information in their day-to-day user experience.
>> Web Design Principles
The basic web #design principles seem to be present but somewhat hidden within a dense forest of too much deluged information. The external web design firm created a homepage that is very aesthetically pleasing, but upon deeper examination the site proves not to be completely up-to-speed for providing more intuitive ease with the upper-level functionality necessary for everyday students and faculty as core power users. – Therefore, this key target audience is often left wanting due to multiple unmet informational needs.
WAVE 3.0 Web Accessibility Notes:
>> Errors and Warnings
The #WAVE 3.0 evaluation tool detected a number of errors and alerts to include: 6 general errors; 11 contrast errors; 173 alerts; 29 feature errors; 97 structural element alerts; and 37 ARIA concerns to be addressed.
>> Accessibility Suggestions
The main #accessibility suggestion points to looking first towards the main structural elements of the Information Architecture of the site. Starting with IA will help to bring more intuitive navigation to the information-rich web pages. From here, the multiple contrast and ARIA errors will definitely impede the visually-impaired, as well as other wide spectrums of the disabled subset which need to be welcomed as an integral part of the overall user population. Providing more accommodations for these highlighted accessibility issues will go far to improve all user groups to be able to delve into a more delightful overall user experience from end-to-end.
Additional Notes:
“Be original, show off your style, and tell your story. ― Anonymous.
>> Nielsen & Loranger (2006) in “Prioritizing Web Usability” suggest that websites have as little as 25-35 seconds to convince users that the information they are looking for is available. User impact must be immediate – and user menu selections should strive to be even more intuitive.
>> Furthermore, an unexpected poor user experience negatively impacts the site’s overall bounce rate… According to this “Website Usability Guide,” once a candidate leaves your site after a bad impression, they are 88% unlikely to return. Therefore, much attention needs to be paid to these primary information source menu options, the improvement of the search functionality for the site, and the overall IA infrastructure to address highlighted navigational challenges. Be certain that all of the various Subsites and Microsites for the #iSchool in all of the various menu options have the same cohesive look and feel as the overall branded theme of the main website.
>> Mobile devices are projected to generate about 77.5 exabytes per month in global website traffic for the calendar year 2022 (Source: Statista). Hence, it’s extremely important to make sure that our web page design is responsive and mobile-friendly. In addition, having a good search function can greatly impact our mobile user-experience by enabling them to directly find out what they need to know while on-the-go.
>> Social Media icon links provide additional assistance to prospective students as a very important resource in successful student recruitment. Le et. al. (2019) point out in their peer-reviewed report on electronic “Word of Mouth” that 80% of this user group tend to utilize social media when researching university selections for info search and evaluation of alternatives. Peer testimonials and crowd-sourcing of information hold remarkable psychological weight in the overall decision-making process. Therefore, the #iSchool should consider employing a social listening strategy (also investigating college-aggregator sites, external search engines, as well as Quora and Yahoo Q & A) to better incorporate important questions and concerns that are addressed outside of the traditional website space.
>> In a recent survey by Search Engine Journal, 40% of participants hold search box functions to be more important than anything else. Therefore, much attention needs to be placed on improving the robustness of our search bar functionality and successful ranking of query results to match user expectations. If our search algorithms integrate Google Analytics (alongside any dialogue from IT in better understanding universal requests for tech support help tickets), we can then potentially track how often people look for particular terms in search – and anticipate more common navigational and IT concerns. This rich analytical data can then be strategically utilized to modify our page content as well as the overall IA hierarchy of design in an ongoing iterative fashion.
>> Research by Ihme et. al. (2016) in this peer-reviewed study suggests that including important diversity cues articulate to potential students that they can “anticipate fair and respectful treatment from other students, staff, and faculty.” Furthermore, showing commitment to creating a learning environment for “culturally and socially diverse student populations provides a basis for positive outcomes” ultimately leading to pride in the organization. Verbal diversity statement in the decision-making process sends a message that all applicants are welcome. The psychological reaction from this perceived feeling of an inclusive “person-organization fit” ultimately leads to encouraging program enrollment.
>> To better accommodate prospective students with a wide array of potential physical and/or cognitive disabilities, as well as older candidates with possible technical and dexterity challenges, perhaps we should implement a few “Extreme Users” into the mix of Nielsen’s five users principle for broadening our ongoing, iterative research. Understanding the unique needs of this particular subset of the population will ultimately benefit all users in the long run.