Title: Undergraduate Research Opportunities
website: https://balsamiq.cloud/s9yd6w7/p6pabs4/r2278
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Slide 4: UX design issues
ExecutiveSummary
Topic
Our topic for this research project is Undergraduate Research Opportunities.
Top Three Design Goals
Our top three design goals were centered around making sure that the website had relevant
links, as many of the links on the website currently lead to dead pages. Additionally, making the
primary reason that most users are on the website for the main focus of the website was
another design goal. Currently, the website feels as though it does not center itself specifically
around research opportunities for undergraduate students, as it requires the user to navigate
through the website for a bit before being able to find this. Finally, our third most important
design goal was making sure that the user was aware of where they were at any given time.
Currently the user can easily get lost trying to find specific information, being unaware as to
whether or not they are on the right track.
Discoveries during research
1. Dead links riddle the website, making it irrelevant as a source for finding many of the
information it claims to provide
2. The website itself does not feel like a branch from the school’s original website. It does
not aesthetically look pleasing nor fitting
3. The website could be minimized a lot and focus primarily on research opportunities and
other things second
4. Many of the paper prototype feedback was centered around utilizing filters, where having
too many filters is much better than having too little.
5. We considered enabling the user to sign into their profile. This would automatically help
format the opportunities available around the users major and other qualifications, as
well as provide easy access to communicate with a research group.
Heuristic Evaluation of Deployed Website
For the current layout of the undergraduate research site, there are usability strengths found in
the current design. Such strengths are:
Heuristic Strengths
Consistency and
Standards
The website stays consistent within itself and the layout it chose to go with
User Control and
Freedom
The website does not feel constricting and it feels as though the user is
able to maneuver around it from link to link fairly easily
Evidently, there are also usability weaknesses within the system. Here are the weaknesses we
have identified, the severity of the weakness, as well as our recommended course of action .
Heuristics Description Severity Recommendations
Aesthetics and
minimalist design
Site does not welcome the user into
itself and is confusing from first glance
on where to go. Has many links which
contain no relevance to undergraduate
research
4 Remove a lot of unnecessary content
and work towards a simpler design
that caters to what most of the users
are going on the website to do.
Help users
recognize,
diagnose, and
recover from errors
Users are not aware that they are in
the wrong spot
4 Making the website flow more and
having it more centered towards
genuine research opportunities
would help this issue where users
are lost without knowing it and are
trying to find links
Error prevention Many links lead to dead links 4 Update the site with new links
Flexibility and
efficiency of use
Website is not efficient in displaying
relevant info. Users are unable to find
research projects. Many ‘intuitive’
clicks lead to no progress
4 Again, updating the links on the
website to ensure that they are
relevant will solve some of this.
Additionally, making the design
simpler will avoid many of these
issues
Help and
documentation
Not much help or documentation at all 3 Add an additional form of contact for
support, preferably a quicker method
than email
Visibility of system
status
Don’t have a sign in function, means
no personal data used
3 Add a sign in feature that would help
cater to specific profile desires (i.e.
major specific profiling)
Paper Prototypes
There were three tasks we had our participants try achieve with our paper prototype:
Task 1: Try to get in contact with a research project of your degree
Task 2: Find a FAQ section
Task 3: Find research projects associated with a certain professor
From our small sample of eight participants, we discovered some strengths with our paper
prototypes. There are as follows:
– Simplicity. Both prototypes were done with straightforward pathways to their goal. Two of
our participants had made extra clicks during their navigation. When questioned, they
said they were curious about the effects of certain interactions made available.
– Intuitive. Interactive buttons were big and obvious. Furthermore, links were made
obvious through color coding as the knew a blue line represented an interactable action.
6 of the testers felt the system was a 4 on a 5-point scale, as they thought it was mostly
easy and intuitive but could still be improved.
– Filters. Both prototypes provided the capabilities of filtering. When provided a large
population of available research projects, the participants sought out a method of filtering
through the options.
– Flow. Although both prototypes were very much limited in functionality, it did not leak out
to external websites to perform their task. Our last participant thought “the design made
a lot of sense” and commented on the tab as having “a clean look that users are used to”
while they navigated around the website
There were also some weaknesses from our design which could be improved on, as some
participants were at times conflicted with the next step in a process. Some major weaknesses
are as follows:
– External interruptions.Although a strength was the fact that the website did not redirect to
tester elsewhere, it originally required their default email application to open. For
prototype B, this was from the “Contact Us” button which was intended to help the user
send emails to the research group, while such functionality was missing on prototype A.
We would recommend a suggestion from one of our participants. Our 4th participant
suggested adding logging in capabilities, thus the button would automatically send an
email using the user’s university email. Otherwise, to remain the consistent flow, swap
the button with just their email address and contact details
– More filters. Although the addition of filters was a strength in both paper prototypes, the
current capabilities are still quite limited in option. Our 5th, 6th, and 7th participants
suggested more filters.
We recommend adding the additional filters brought up by our testers. Filters the 5th
participant suggested was “date” which the 6th suggested “deadline and availability”.
Our 7th participant suggested being able to sort by relevance such as when the next
deadline would be.
– Naming. While testing, 3 participants who were paired with prototype B were confused if
they were supposed to click “Connections” or “Contact us” when they were tasked with
finding a list of professors, while 3 testers with prototype A struggle to even find a list of
professors.
We recommend renaming “Connections” into something more straightforward. Although
a less vertical prototype would have more content within this tab, we suggest a change
to “Staff” or “Lead Researchers”.
– Support. While there was a FAQ incorporated, 1 participants wanted to be able to write
their own questions. While prototype B did have an attempt at such a task, the
participant who raised this said they would prefer to “have a list of contact details where
they can personally ask questions”.
We recommend having either a dedicated email for answering questions from these
students. Otherwise, incorporating piazza-like features allowing previous questions to be
viewed and answered by more knowledgeable users.
Appendix
Prototype A
Prototype B
User Study Protocol
– Introduction to project
– (Undergraduate Research Projects)
– (Help support undergraduates in finding relevant research opportunities)
– Provide instructions
– Administer relevant demographics to determine interviewee attributes
– Ask if we can record
– Ask them to speak their thoughts out loud
– Show them the paper prototype they are going to interact on
– Ask them to try perform task 1
– Don’t provide help
– Ask what they are expected/looking for
– Tell them to say when they have ‘ended/finished’ and found what they are
looking for
– Repeat for task 2 and 3
– Ask questions depending on their past actions (if relevant)
– Administer. UX questionnaires
Quantitative (Scale of 1 to 5 if applicable)
– I found the system unnecessarily complex
– I thought the system was easy to use
– I felt confident about using the system
– I did not feel stressed or lost while navigating the interface
– # of errors doing all the task
Qualitative (descriptive)
– Thoughts on the process
– Did anything feel unnecessary but helpful?
– Did you feel as if you reached your goal too quickly
– Did you feel as if you required some technical background
– Ask follow up interview questions if their answers warrant it
– Wrap up and thank the participant
General Notes from User Studies
Prototype B
Lion 01
– Interviewed by Wong Chong using prototype B
– Paper prototype does what is expected. Actions feel quite intuitive.
– Filters for projects are nice but wanted more options for filtering such as time
– Liked that the user was able to go from ‘opportunities’ to other tabs such as
‘connections’
through links and buttons.
Panda 02
– Interviewed by Wong Chong using prototype B
– Some better color coding may make links more obvious
– Having a picture inserted to show the professor is helpful, so the student will know the
appearance of who they are
– The section for asking unanswered questions should probably be on another screen,
since it would be good to see the past questions as well.
Leopard 03
– Interviewed by Wong Chong using prototype B
– Wanted to be able to type in question, or have search question capabilities like piazza
– Tab naming felt weird. ‘Advising’ or ‘faculty’ should be used rather than instead of
‘connections’
– Wanted more filter options
Cat 04
– Interviewed by Wong Chong using prototype B
– Suggested having login capabilities. Ensuring contacts to know who sent it. Envisioned
something like the enrollment process.
– Suggested having external links to answers on relevant FAQ’s to support the answer
– Suggested ’Connections’ to be changed to ‘professor’ and ‘Connect Us’ to ‘Contact the
Professor’.
Prototype A
Tiger 05
– Interviewed by Simon Lemay using prototype A
– Should have more filters like dates. Not just major specific.
– Maybe have a people’s tab. More tabs to be more specific
Pig 06
– Interview by Shen Cheng using prototype A
– Under Q&A, there is no place for me to look for the specific questions, it did not show
where I can post the questions.
– The filter should be more detailed. (Like deadline, availability)
– It is really hard for him to find the research project associated with a certain professor.
Mtwo 07
– Interviewed by Shen Cheng using prototype A
– On the opportunity page, there should be added a “Professor”.
– We should put more pictures on the homepage.
Woof 08
– Interviewed by Simon Lemay using prototype A
– Would like a filter for relevance/when the next research is coming up on the opportunities
page
– Felt the design made a lot more sense and tabs are a clean look that users are used to
– Confused at first as to what the search bar would do
Positive and Negative Aspects of the Paper Prototypes
Positives
– Allowed the wizard to continue moving when the user attempted an unexpected action.
For example, on prototype B, a user ‘pressed’ on the image of the professor, which was
unexpected to the designer. But the expected outcome was on another slide made for
another action. Thus, this revealed spots which we had not expected to be used, but
should be implemented.
– Reveals a more basic approach to the system with less buffer content. This confirmed
our thoughts that the current website has too much buffer content between the user and
the content they actually want to get to.
Negatives
– Didn’t have content which was redundant. This may make the actual time navigating the
site longer as they have less distractions.
– Everything was basically monotone. This will most definitely affect the ease of accessing
items as interactable links were drawn in blue. In reality, there would be other colors all
around making it less obvious.
– Didn’t have many functions other than the ones we expected to be used for our task. For
example, on prototype B there is a “Contact” tab, but does not have a slide representing
the content
Prototype Version 1:
Tasks for interviewees
Task #1
Try to get in contact with a research project of your degree
Task #2
Find a FAQ/forum where other students have asked questions
Task #3
Find research project associated with a certain professor
Study Protocol
– Introduction to project
– (Undergraduate Research Projects)
– (Help support undergraduates in finding relevant research opportunities)
– Provide instructions
– Administer relevant demographics to determine interviewee attributes
– Ask if we can record
– Ask them to speak their thoughts out loud
– Show them the paper prototype they are going to interact on
– Ask them to try perform task 1
– Don’t provide help
– Ask what they are expected/looking for
– Tell them to say when they have ‘ended/finished’ and found what they are
looking for
– Repeat for task 2 and 3
– Ask questions depending on their past actions (if relevant)
– Administer. UX questionnaires
Quantitative (Scale of 1 to 5 if applicable)
– I found the system unnecessarily complex
– I thought the system was easy to use
– I felt confident about using the system
– I did not feel stressed or lost while navigating the interface
– # of errors doing all the task
Qualitative (descriptive)
– Thoughts on the process
– Did anything feel unnecessary but helpful?
– Did you feel as if you reached your goal too quickly
– Did you feel as if you required some technical background
– Ask follow up interview questions if their answers warrant it
– Wrap up
– Ask if they have any questions they want to ask
– Give group code
