Users
The pool of Our test users are quite representative of the our target audienceusers. We built the website mainly targeting targeting reasonably internet-savvy job seekers in general, but particularly college students, and because of this so the bulk of the test users were college students. We have two other users that are apart of different populations; while the site was not directly targeting to them, we wanted to make sure that the site was still usable. our user tests were on college students.
The users we tested on are the following:
- course 5 sophomore at MIT
- course 6 junior at MIT
- course 7 junior at MIT
- high school CS teacher (still a potential job-seeker, over middle-aged)
- course 6 MIT alum '06
Briefing
Hi, I'm _____ and these are my partners _____ and _________. Thanks for helping us out! We're testing out a system to help people manage a job search. The system, named JobTracker, is a website that people can use to manage documents and keep track of tasks related to their job search.
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Users were not given a demo . We felt a demo would hurt learnability testing for this site, and we wouldn't find out if design choices we made had or had not improved learnability. Since the target audience would not normally get a demo from the designs of the site, we felt that the best way to find out any issues was let test users approach the site the same way we though new users would.
Usability issues
- they wouldn't get one in the course of normally encountering JobTracker, and we felt that giving our test users a demo would only reduce the amount of information we could learn from them.
Usability issues
- The While not directly a design issue, "View All Tasks" task seems to be universally difficultwas difficult for some of our users. It is possible that since there was only one company in the testing environment that all tasks were on that company. One approach to test this would be to add some information on the sitethis was simply a result of ambiguity: having only added one company, a user is effectively "viewing all tasks" on the company page. We could test this hypothesis by giving a test user an account that already contained some data, however since we wanted to recreate what a new user would see that would not be the best approach. I think the best approach would have been to add multiple companies and add multiple tasks before given them this task, but since the test users' time was precious we felt that this was probably the best way. One user was confused by the word "upcoming", thought that might be different than just viewing all the tasks, tried to use the company selection box, and ended up more confused. Severity: 2 (minor)
- It wasn't clear which fields on all the forms ( Add Company, Add Task, and Add Contact ) was required, this forms were required. This caused some users to make up information, while others just tried submitting without themdidn't fill in the unspecified fields. We could resolve this issue by adding (Required) in the placeholder text, or we labels with asterisks could be re-added.(consistent with adding documents), add asterisks to the fields. Severity: 1 (cosmetic)
- The icons on the upper left hand corner (Home, Add Document) were hard to locate, and took a long time for our users to find. One user went to the company details page to add a document, while the majority eventually found the add document button. To fix this issue, it would make sense to move the logo to the top-left corner and move all the other buttons to the top right corner creating a navigation bar. Since most sites use this design, it will be easier for users to find them, and will also create a more visible block of icons to draw the eye. Severity: 2 (minor)
- It was not apparent what the "home" icon did for one user, and the he thought the "logout" icon was to get back to the main for backing up to a previous page. One solution would be to replace the home icon with the Logo and have the logo link back, or to add a back icon on the bottom of the page like some sites.. This confusion may have been specific to this user, however. Severity: 2 (minor)
- The dialog alerting users about unsaved data, confused most users while others just ignored it and clicked through. One possible solution would be to save changes on leaving the page, or to just not save it unsaved data. The alert itself didn't seem to help convey that something was unsaved.be specific enough. Severity: 2 (minor)
- "Details" link is not visible enough for most users. It's hard to find, small,and did not line up with the delete icon. Users expanded the company view attempting to get to the company page. A solution would be to make the details link larger, and have the company name link to the companies page also.
- Many users were unclear what a "task" was. SOLUTION? One possible solution could be to change the title of the boxes to "To do list" or something to that effect.
- One user attempted to click on the filler text to add a company. One solution to this problem would be to let the text be able to add a company.
- The submit button remains disabled until the text boxes are no longer selected. This was confusing to several users, to fix this we could have the event trigger when enough data is added, or to just not disable the submit button.
- One user forgot the purpose of the "Name" field in the "Add Contact" form after selecting it, and since it was selected the placeholder text was no longer visible. One solution would be to add tooltips, so that hovering over the field would also give that information, or to add fields for the form back.
- One user entered dates in directly to the text box and didn't use the date picker. He ended up entering in 5/15/11, which will confuse the database ordering. A solution to this would be to sanitize the inputs before inputting them into the database.'
- In the expanded company box, the notes text area looks editable when it isn't. A solution would be to just use a div instead of a textarea object for that part of the widget.