User testing

User Testing User Profile My websites were tested by 2 different audiences: my classmates and my college students.

Classmates working adults advanced computer users from different nationalities and backgrounds enthusiastic and honest online

Students college students advanced and naive computer users All national Emiratis mostly pleasing face-to-face

Checklist My audiences answered these questions as they went through my websites.

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Is the information easy to follow?

Do you know where to start and where to finish?

Are the media and documents easy to access?

Did you like the presentation of the materials?

Was this site useful?

What else would you like to see?

What did you like most and least?

What change would you like to see?

Script

Since I couldn’t meet my classmates face-to-face and I trust their judgement, I just asked them to go through the documents and presentations on my websites and asked them to report anything they had difficulty with or thought could be improved. They communicated their suggested online.

The situation was a bit different with my students. First and foremost, I couldn’t fully rely on their honesty as some tend to conceal the truth in order to please me. As a result, I watched as my students went through my websites and assessed the ease with which they opened the documents and played the presentations. As expected, I benefited mostly from the naïve users as they were the ones who would make me change things to suit their needs.

User Testing Aggregated user feedback

Both my websites contain the same material, but the presentation is different. My official site, which I designed on Google Sites, consists of several pages with menus and submenus, and each page deals with one topic only. My experimental website, which I designed with Dreamweaver, consists of just one page with all the materials embedded in it.

Generally speaking, everybody liked the way the material was presented on both sites, although some thought having everything on one page looked neat and easy to access. Some had problems playing the media but then attributed it to their slow Internet connection or missing software on their computer (such as Java). They all found the topic interesting, well presented, and the sites easy to navigate. Some suggested making the beginning and end clearer although it was quite clear where to start and end on both sites. Finally, some commented on improving the quality of the audio in the presentations.

Notes I’m still not sure which website is better designed. The feedback I received was mostly positive with only a couple of extra points for the one-page website. Users enjoyed the presentations and navigated the websites without difficulty.

Changes I made only one change based on the feedback I received. I added numbers next to each section/presentation so that not even the most naïve user would get confused. I didn’t change the audio recordings because that was the best I could do with PowerPoint built-in recording device.