In general we really like the Tele-Bears redesign. We think that from an interaction standpoint the team is heading in the right direction. The overall flow is very natural and easy to understand. Most of the problems we found are in the 1-2 severity level, reflecting the strength of the existing interaction We did find some small usability problems but we feel that they are mostly reflective of this early stage of development.

We are wondering about the lack of an interaction for “wait listed” courses, and courses where a instructor or departmental approval is required to enroll. Since this a significant part of the current registration process, we feel that it should have been addressed in the prototype.

Some of the areas where we think the site could be improved are listed below and are also incorporated into the Heuristic Evaluation in most cases.

We agree with the comments from class that the schedule would be more natural on the right of the screen, and that the search and results should be displayed on the left.

We also think that when the course is selected from the schedule for modification, the area where search and search results are currently displayed could be used to display an interface to edit all of the student’s information related to that class, e.g. registration status, grade option, chosen section. The individual edit mode buttons to the right of the schedule could be eliminated, to provide a quicker and simpler modification interface.

Since the average student will touch this interface at least once a semester we feel that shortcuts could be added to facilitate expert users. In particular we feel that users should be able to add multiple courses from their Sandbox in one step.

We also identified several areas where selecting a radio button was necessary to complete the interaction, but the interaction proceeds with or without a selection. We think that some kind of error message or feedback is necessary in these cases.

Between the sandbox and the registration interfaces we noticed some inconsistencies. Classes that are added to the registration schedule show up as not enrolled in the sandbox. We think that this is a prototype issue, but that the consistency between course information in the registration and sandbox areas is a very important issue.