Senior Project Database: Design and Usability Evaluation

1. Senior Project Database: Design and Usability Evaluation Stephanie Cheng Rachelle Hom Ronald Mg Hoang Bao CSC 484 – Winter 2005

2. Senior Project Center Concept • Students who are interested in beginning their senior project, but don’t know where to start • Students who are looking for supplemental help during their senior project • Resource where students may come together to collaborate and share ideas

3. Senior Project Center Environment • Brainstorming area and software • Research station • Presentation/video conference room • Publishing area

4. Overview • From the data collection about the Senior Project Center: • 78% of students surveyed felt it was NOT easy to start their senior project. Among the difficulties was finding a topic. • 63% of students felt it was beneficial to work with a partner, but there is no official tool to make finding partners a simple task for students. • Hence, we decided to focus on one of the most important aspects of the Senior Project Center: the Senior Project Database Search

5. Senior Project Database Search • A web based tool that allows users to: • Find a senior project topic and/or partner • Post a senior project topic and/or partner • Discussion board Targeted audience: • Students • Professors • Companies • Communities

6. Design Approach • First we created a paper-based prototype of our Senior Project Database Search using Microsoft Visio • Goals: • Simple • Intuitive • Easy to use

7. Paper-based Prototype

8. Paper-based Prototype (cont.)

9. Paper-based Prototype (cont.)

10. Preliminary Feedback • Questions we asked users about the paper- based prototype during data collection • Is there enough information on each panel? • Is it easy to understand? • What changes would you recommend?

11. Preliminary Feedback (cont.) • Positive aspects: • Intuitive layout, in logical order • Good flow of information • Low learning curve • Negative aspect: • Wanted to be able to post topics similar to being able to post a search for a senior project partner (we added this change to the next prototype) • Overall feedback was positive; felt that it would be a good addition to the Senior Project Center.

12. Interactive Prototype • Used DreamWeaver MX to develop web-based prototype • Based on the positive feedback, we kept a similar layout to the paper-based prototype

13. Usability Study of Interactive Prototype • Short questionnaires about the look and feel, intuitiveness, general impression, etc. • Used ranking scale when possible to keep results as objective as possible. • Environment of data collection: • Informal • In test subjects’ homes • “Quick and dirty” method due to time constraint.

14. Result of Usability Study

15. Result of Usability Study (cont.)

16. Suggested Changes • Colors are not uniform • Need more content on help page • Search fields are a little disorganized

17. Final Prototype • Prototype with revisions based on usability study • Made color scheme more uniform • Added a more extensive help page • Re-organized search fields • Demonstration: http://www.calpoly.edu/~rhom/main.html

18. Usability Evaluation Plan for Complete System • Observe users as they perform a set of tasks • Find a senior project topic • Find a senior project partner • Post a senior project topic • Post a search for senior project partners • Log into the discussion board and ask a question • Note the difficulties they are having • Note the time it takes for the users to complete each task • Ask users to rank their overall satisfaction with the Senior Project Database Search

19. Further Work • Possible continuation of our work • The database could be implement through senior projects or CSC 366 projects • A completed and functional version of Senior Project Database Search is feasible. • The Senior Project Database Search could serve as an important part of the future Learning Commons.

20. Conclusion • Questions? • Thank you!