See our work with a client to evaluate the end-to-end user experience of Pitt’s Department of Chemistry Website
Usability Testing, UX Research
Project completed for ENGCMP Usability Testing in Technical Writing under the guidance of Stephen Quigley
Background
Our team of three was assigned a case study of www.chem.pitt.edu. Our client, Bud Bruziela, was a network administrator for the site. We drafted a proposal for him that included our purpose and scope, research questions, methodology, and study design.
Proposal
Introductory Meeting
We set up a time to meet with Bud via Zoom to introduce ourselves, discuss our proposal, learn his goals for the study, and address any questions or concerns he may have.
Introductory Meeting Notes
Design and Accessibility Heuristic Evaluation
After our meeting, we got to work on complete a design and accessibility heuristic. We utilized Nielsen’s Design Heuristic to assess and evaluate the design elements of the site. We also used accessibility tools, including three Chrome Extensions: ChromeLens, to simulate blindness and color-blindness, ScreenReader, to read aloud text on the screen, and Lighthouse, to generate a report on performance, accessibility, and best practices. We summarize these findings in our final report.
Screening Criteria, Testing Script, and User Testing
To evaluate the usability of the site, we tested four people who fit the target audience. To determine if they fit this standard, we asked three screening questions. They were:
Are you over 18?
Are you a college or prospective college student at Pitt?
What is your occupation and/or what are you studying?
After evaluating the testers’ relation to the target audience, we tested Pitt’s Department of Chemistry website via Zoom. We chose Zoom for its ability to record, share screens, and create a live audio-transcript. We spoke from a script to maintain consistency across studies, but we built in flexibility to ask follow-up questions or revisit something the participant had said. Questions included introductory questions about their thoughts on the site as a whole and tasks to work through.
Our Final Report
We shared a summary of our findings from the heuristic and the user testing in our final written report, as well as in a slide deck presented to our client and our peers. It highlights our methodology, findings, and recommendations for the site, including adding alt text to images, improving user control and freedom, and different aesthetic choices.