After receiving
valuable feedback from the McInterface group regarding our first interactive
prototype, we have redesigned our site. The fixed elements of the site
have remained basically the same. However, the flow of the site has
changed somewhat, and the variable content pages have been modified.
Note: The second
interactive prototype may be used with user name tester1 and password
tester1.
Fixed Elements
There are still
fixed elements on the top and left hand side of every page. The top
of the page contains the site logo, a link to the entry page, links
to the "parent" organizations (SIMians and SIMS), and the search function.
The left side of the page contains links to different browsing pages
(browse by subject, semester or course number), the login page (or logout
function, depending on login status), and the help/faq pages. The evaluators
did not find any problems with most of the fixed elements. The only
change we made was the wording of the link to add a comment to a course.
The button has been changed from "Add a Comment..." to "Rate a Course..."
because it was interpreted to refer to commenting about the website
itself.
Variable Content
The center of the page
contains the variable content. The user can browse for courses, scan search
results, read about a course, or rate/comment on a course in this area
of the page. The general flow has not changed. The user still clicks on
a course name on one of the "browse by" pages or the search results page
to see a description of the course (including the semester and the professor(s)
who taught the course). If she is not logged in, then she must log in
before seeing the comments and ratings. She clicks on a link within the
course page to add a comment to the course page. One of the two major
changes that we made concerns adding comments to a course. In our last
prototype, the user was forced to preview her comment before being able
to submit it to the system. We have changed the flow so that the user
can decide either to submit the comment directly or to preview it first
and then submit it. She can cancel the submission at any time during the
process. In addition, users cannot submit completely blank comments. The
user is asked to edit her comment or cancel the submission if no rating
or comment text is entered.
The other major
change involves the rating system. In the last prototype, we used a
"thumbs up" rating system which our evaluators did not find intuitive.
We have now implemented a numeric system. Courses, professors and course
difficulty are rated on a 1 to 5 scale. We are unsure if users will
understand the new system, but we hope to address that question through
usability testing.
Usability Testing
Most of the major
changes we made to the site were in anticipation of the upcoming usability
testing. Our previous prototype was not fully functional. To make this
prototype functional, we used an Access database to hold all of the
course and comment information, and we used Cold Fusion and HTML to
display the information in the browser. Users can now see information
about all SIMS courses and selected courses from other departments.
They can add ratings and comments that actually show up on the course
pages.
Because of the complexity
of the new web pages, there are a few limitations to the current prototype.
- There is no registration
page. We are still not sure how potential users will be screened before
being given access to the site. For now, we will give the usability
testers pre-determined login names and passwords.
- Within the comments
section of every course page, there is a section that recommends other
courses ("People who liked this course also recommended..."). This
is non-functional at the moment.
We do not anticipate
that these limitations will hinder the usability testing process.
There are a couple
of questions that we hope will be resolved with the usability testing.
- Are users satisfied
with the threading of the design? During the initial design phase,
we sketched both a threaded system (allowing for replies to other
replies, not only to the initial topic) and a linear system (allowing
only replies to the initial topic). All of our prototypes have since
been linear systems, although we continue to ask ourselves whether
a threaded design would be preferable. We would like to get feedback
pertaining to this question from our user population during the usability
tests.
- Is the rating
scale understandable and easy to use? We have changed our rating scale
from thumbs to numbers in reaction to the heuristic evaluation results.
As we mistakenly believed the thumb scale to be intuitive, we would
like feedback about the numeric scale before designing our third prototype.
For more information
about the specific changes we made to the site, please look at the heuristic
evaluation of our site and our response
to the evaluators' findings.