Page History

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Figure 11: Composing Messages

Implementation

In our final implementation, we decided to focus on developing the front-end using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, as opposed to implementing a persistent backend using PHP and SQL. Using JavaScript, we implemented a single session for a single client. The only place where we used PHP was in logging in through certificates, as we felt it was important to implement this for user testing.

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There are still some issues when a user tries to message a post in the “Browse” tab. Other problem is in the ‘Posts” tab under “My Posts”, the total number of posts that were created by the user is shown, and there is a link to possibly showing different posts, but this link does not work. The same feature was added to the posts under the “Browse” tab, but it’s working the way we wanted.

Evaluation

For our user tests, we had 4 representative users to test the system: 2 MIT student browsing opportunities, a course 6 professor looking for UROP’s and a company recruiter for a company looking for course 6 students. We found these users mainly through our own contacts; these users are representative of each user groups of our target population (2 students browsing opportunities and 2 people advertising opportunities). We decided not to do a demo for the users as we felt if we did, we would not able to judge the learnability of the system properly.

Briefing

MIT Jobs is a website that will replace Anne Hunter's mailing list. A recruiter will be able to create an account an directly advertise internship or full-time positions on the site. An MIT student with a start-up idea can find students to work with by advertising his/her idea on the site. A professor or grad student seeking a UROP or RA can advertise their available position on the site. On the other hand, an MIT affiliate can browse all posts on the site by different categories if interested in finding something to do that meets some criterion. With this in mind, we will give you some tasks, try to accomplish them, giving us as much feedback as possible in the process.

Tasks

User Group 1: MIT Students

1. Log into the website with your certificate.
2. You are looking for a summer internship in course 6 and specifically in hardware
3. Follow all posts in that category.
4. Send a message to the recruiter of one of the job posts that you are now following.
5. Check your inbox for new messages and read all new messages.

User Group 2: Recruiters looking advertising opportunities

1. Sign up for an account on the website.
2. Create a new post for a software internship in Course 6, in Cambridge, MA, and deadline May 20, 2011.
3. Edit the post and change the deadline to May 27, 2011.
4. Message all people following that post.
5. Delete the post.

Usability Problems and Possible Solutions

First user:

1. Our first user did not have problems doing most of the tasks, but he gave some tips on how we could improve our website. The first tip that was given by the first user was that when he does some task and change from one tab to another tab, or from one view to another, he stated that it would be good if the user good go back to the previous view/tab by only using the backspace button on PCs or the delete button on Macs.
2. Also he noticed that the visibility for seen if a message was read or not read is not that good. There is only one dot, that is red and filled if the message is unread, and that is blue and not filled when the message is read. The user noted that it would be better if the whole color of the button was different if it was in a different state.
3. He also noted that the feature of undoing the deletion of a post should be enable for messages, or at least there should be a mailbox with the most recent deleted messages, which would be called “Trash”.

Second user:

1. Our second user mentioned that he would like to be able to search for a company based on their name. To implement this, we would display a search bar above the filters on the “Browse” tab and put in some searching functionality on the back-end.
2. Currently, all posts are sorted based on application due date (i.e. deadline). The user mentioned that he would like to be able to sort on other fields, such as post title. To fix this, we would have to implement sorting functions on the back-end. Clicking on a field title would sort based on that field to be consistent with other applications that enable such sorting.

Third user (MIT TA):

1. He said he had a more wholesome experience on MITJobs when he thought of himself as a job seeker than when he thought of himself as somebody who is offering a job post. To quote him;

“For some reason, the browsing scheme seems a lot smoother than the posting scheme. When I post something, it does not show up at the front page, it goes to the end of the list of posted things. Despite the fact that the ‘Create Post’ button stands conspicuously at the top of the page, the user is equally served if he can see his post immediately after creating it -- he shouldn’t have to go to the last post to see it. On the other hand, the filtering scheme for browsing is the big shot feature over here, I believe. It’s what makes browsing smooth. Maybe increase the filtering categories to allow filtering by company too.”

1. He proposed displaying the “My Posts” tab only for the recruiters, and moving the “posts I am following” from the “My Posts” tab to the “Browse” tab. He said the “My Posts” tab was just confusing when he thought of himself as a job seeker, both in its name and its content. Both suggestions were good.

This user raised some issues that we found to expose some aspects of our implementation that in essence limit the usability of the interface.

Fourth user:

1. Mentioned he would like to be able to check the users who were following his job post to see his/her profile. This issue was also brought up by our TA, Vijay, in the project demo. As this issue had not come up during the user/task analysis or in any of the prototype evaluations, we did not implement it. However, we realized it is easy to fix as in the JavaScript back-end, we already keep track of the followers for each job post, and we realized we could just have a separate button next to a post the user has created in the “My Posts” tab to view all followers of a post.