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Heuristic & Usability Evaluation of the CSU Dashboard Website
Role: Graduate Researcher Client / Organization: California State University (CSU) A heuristic evaluation and moderated usability study was conducted on the CSU Dashboard website; an interface for administrators to track and observe various student data. |
HEURISTIC EVALUATION.Overview
I served as a heuristic evaluator with a team of 9 other researchers to perform a heuristic analysis on a specific feature of CSU Dashboard. CSU Dashboard is not accessible to the public, and I unfortunately cannot share any specifics of the web application. Method I first evaluated the website on my own against Nielsen's 10 Heuristics. This process entails going through the website to find usability issues that go against any of the 10 heuristics and rating their severity on a scale of 0 - 4 (0 being not severe at all, and 4 being very severe). After evaluating the site on my own, I added my results to a "Team Spreadsheet" containing the results of every team member's individual heuristic evaluation. We met multiple times to go through the spreadsheet and determine which usability issues were severe enough to be addressed, and we settled on 13 issues. Finally, we split off into groups and discussed how to address these issues (i.e. our recommendations to the CSU Dashboard developers). Mock-Ups I was responsible for mocking up 4 of the 13 design solutions. I primarily used Adobe Photoshop to create the mock-ups. Report Writing I described the issues in detail and provided my mock-ups / recommendations in the final report that was delivered to the client. I was made 3rd author for my contribution to the project. |
Cover of the Final Heuristic Evaluation Report That Was Sent to the CSU Dashboard Developers (3rd Author)
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MODERATED USABILITY TESTING.
I assisted with data collection, moderation, and data coding procedures for a moderated usability test of CSU Dashboard.
Procedure
Users were given a consent form and rundown of the experiment, and a pre-test questionnaire prior to testing. I observed users on the the visible side of a one-sided glass divider, recording their face and interactions with Morae and their voice with Google Hangouts. All users were given 13 tasks, and were counterbalanced to control for any assistance task order could provide the user. I documented almost everything users were saying, as well as their interactions (clicks, hovers, page transitions, etc.). After the test, I administered the SUS and a post-test questionnaire aiming to obtain additional feedback.
Coding
All clicks, page transitions, and hovers were counted in order to compute a Lostness score, which is a measurement of how easy or difficult it is to navigate a site. Effectiveness was measured via task completion rate. If a user completed all components of a task successfully, they were given a 1 for that task, if they completed at least 1 component successfully but not all components, they were given a 0.5 for that task, and if they didn't complete any component of the task successfully, they were given a 0 for that task.
Procedure
Users were given a consent form and rundown of the experiment, and a pre-test questionnaire prior to testing. I observed users on the the visible side of a one-sided glass divider, recording their face and interactions with Morae and their voice with Google Hangouts. All users were given 13 tasks, and were counterbalanced to control for any assistance task order could provide the user. I documented almost everything users were saying, as well as their interactions (clicks, hovers, page transitions, etc.). After the test, I administered the SUS and a post-test questionnaire aiming to obtain additional feedback.
Coding
All clicks, page transitions, and hovers were counted in order to compute a Lostness score, which is a measurement of how easy or difficult it is to navigate a site. Effectiveness was measured via task completion rate. If a user completed all components of a task successfully, they were given a 1 for that task, if they completed at least 1 component successfully but not all components, they were given a 0.5 for that task, and if they didn't complete any component of the task successfully, they were given a 0 for that task.