Usability Test Report

Usability Test Report “Elementary School Math Club” in UTOPIA By I-Fan Chou

Overview • Introduction • Objectives • Test Procedure • Task Design • Participant Profile • Results & Summary • Problems & Recommendations • Conclusion

Introduction • Elementary School Math Club (ESMC) is a sub Website under UTOPIA protocol. • ESMC provides five activities for PreK-3 and 4-8 elementary school teachers or parents to use as lesson plans. • ESMC is designed for math educators and parents with elementary school kids in order to stimulate children’s mathematical curiosity.

Objectives • Assessed the performance of target users using the current ESMC Website • Detected any problems focusing on: • Navigation System • Interface Design • Labeling/language

Test Procedure • IRB consent form & Self-report background questionnaire • Performance evaluation: 10 tasks (“Think aloud”, timed, and video/audio recorded) • Interview (Audio recorded)

Task Design • Task 1: Locate ESMC with navigation system • Task 2: Locate ESMC with search function • Task 3: Find the “About” information of ESMC • Task 4: Go to “Math Mobile” section

Task Design (cont’d) • Task 5: Find “Lesson Duration” • Task 6: Find curriculum plan for lesson • Task 7: Download lesson kit to the desktop • Task 8: Find “Distributive Law” • Task 9: Find “Materials” info • Task 10 : Send questions to ESMC

Participant Profile • 10 participants: • 8 math teachers for PreK-3 or 4-8 • 2 parents with elementary school kids • 9 females; 1 male

Participant Profile (cont’d) • All participants have basic Web capabilities • 5 out of 10 have visited UTOPIA protocol • 7 participants have used online tutorial tools

Results & Summary • 60% of the tasks had errors happened • 40% of the participants completed tasks without making errors • Task 3 (70%) and Task 10 (80%) had lower success rate than any other tasks • T3: Find the “About” information of ESMC • T10: Send questions to ESMC Confusion of universal navigation bar between ESMC and UTOPIA

Results & Summary (cont’d) • Task 2 (117.5 sec.) has the longest time span in average for the participants to complete • T2: Locate ESMC with search function Problems in search function Demo

Problems & Recommendations • Navigation System • Hard to locate ESMC • Role settings vs. Local navigation bar • URL is not easy for memorizing • Bread crumb links do not help much • Search results are sorted by categories  • add “Sort by relevance” function will help • Confusion of universal navigation bar  • Move “About” and “Help/FAQ” of UTOPIA up

Problems & Recommendations (cont’d) • Interface Design • Entrance page • “That’s the huge problem, it’s misleading!” • “Tell me what is this, don’t make me click on everything to find out what it is” Tool tips will help! • Consistency • Fonts • “It’s really small, and no body wants to read that!” • Color • Orange links? • Blue headers?

Problems & Recommendations (cont’d) • Labeling/language • Not Teacher friendly language • Not TEKS language • ex. Platonic Solids Geometric Solid • “I’ve never seen platonic solid until I saw here.” • Too complicated • Not straightforward • Too much redundant information • Vague labeling terms • The Math Math(ematical) Concepts/ Math Formula • Number Paths, Guess the number-magic trick, The Human Counting Machine, A Math Mural

Conclusion • Modify the search function to serve users’ searching behavior • Improve the navigation to locate ESMC from UTOPIA • Decrease the confusion of universal navigation bar • Match the Interface design with target user’s expectation

Conclusion (cont’d) • Improve consistency between entrance page and inside pages • Change vague terms • Add tool tips when users move the mouse over the graphics • Revise the language to match TEKS language • Enlarge the fonts; deduct the content

Any Questions? Thank you!

Usability Test Report