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The Login Page simply consists of the Phi Kappa Sigma crest and a login form, making the page as simple as possible.
Clicking on the user's name in the main navigation tab bar takes you to the edit profile page, where the user can change his account information. All fields except for the last two password fields are pre-filled since these are unlikely to change and to speed up the editing process.
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We first had them login as regular users with predefined usernames and passwords. We asked them to find their house jobs, complete them, and tells us what their past house jobs were. From there we asked them to identify other users jobs and had them switch to the room reservation tab. In this tab, we gave them a predefined event time to schedule for, had them manage an event time conflict, and then schedule an event of their own. Once completed, we asked the users to manage their account to change their password and logout. We had the user take a 30-second break while we changed their admin status in the database. Upon completion, we had them log back in with their new password. We told them that they were now administrators and asked them to manage several settings in the admin panel. Since we hoped that most things would be intuitive, we didn't give them any specific guidance; instead, we observed what they tried to do. After letting them explore the panel on their own, we asked them to use the filters and search (if they hadn't done so already). Once we were satisfied that they had explored all the interfaces features, we had them log out and give us their overall impression.
Usability Issues
User 1 (programmer)
- Confirmation of password change appears in a confusing location (visibility, usability)
This user expected the notification that the password had been changed to appear in a different location. He had used many web applications before and was used to certain stylistic conventions. However, this problem isn't serious and can be easily fixed.
User 2 (power user, house job administration experience)
- The admin panel has unnecessary filters (learnability)
This user had managed house jobs by hand previously and was confused by the number of filters that were present on the admin panel. He thought they were unnecessary and wanted some of them to be removed. This can also be fixed by modifying the typus template that we used to produce the administration panel. Right now it provides standard options based on the database structure, and we can customize certain pages.
User 3 (novice user)
- Saving and event with errors clears submission form (usability)
This error was noticed by all users of the system. It was something that we didn't catch initially since we had been entering events with correct details when testing. However, errors like we instructed our users to make will be fairly common, so this is a major design improvement that we need to make.
Reflection
Over the course of the iterative design process, we were able to focus on improving the overall design of the site, by focusing on the individual components. At the start of the project, we had a much larger project in mind, but we decided to tone it down to be able to work on making the most integral components of the site as good as possible. Prototyping our design in several different ways helped us to form a better picture of the site in our heads before we even sat down to code, which significantly cut down on the actual coding time. The computer prototype in particular allowed us to be able to focus a lot of our attention on the back-end of the site, and to make several small iterative changes to the prototype to improve the final product. User testing and heuristic evaluation really helped us focus on improving particular parts of the user interface, also cutting down time working on the front-end. Furthermore, because of the time saved, we were able to mock up, design, and completely implement a brand new feature to the site (the Admin Panel).
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