Katie Calabro ogee tf poco, Rabee Khan 7 Project Two Assessment Starting out with project two, Rabe and | decided to create our own litle group. We knew this would make us responsible with more work, but in the end it made communication and splitting up tasks a lot easier. With both of us being unfamiliar with the CLAS WordPress site UNCC faculty use, we had to take a lot of time to explore it ourselves to make a good task list. From the task list, we constructed appropriate pre and post questions for the user test. count We originally wanted to conduct three different user tests, bu-s6on found out how high the competition was for our class to get a user in the CLAS department to take our test. We found that the people contacted either already agreed to a test with another group in the class, they did not want to be involved, or they ignored us entirely. Thanks to Dr. Wickliff, we were able to conduct our first user test during class time with a user that he recruited. Our second user was equally as helpful as our first and we learned a lot through that tests as well Some of the problems we encountered include issues with technology, signing in on the right WordPress log in, user frustration, and our lack of access to the normal staff WordPress view. Some of the other issues we also faced included figuring out how to write a small report. It took us a while to figure out what information is important and what we could simply just toss out of the report. Since this report was not to be extremely detailed we have to analyze a lot of the information we gathered and mark what we deemed to be important. This also carried over to the reference guide. We had to use our research and see which tasks the users struggled with the most. Doing so enabled us to create a guide for those specific tasks, rather than creating guides for every single task, that most users would have been able to figure out on their own ‘We did this by comparing both user tests and finding areas of overlap and similarities that we found. We then created a small guide for the tasks that we found bother users struggled with, Overall think we leamed from the mistakes of our first project and were able to fix them in our second project. We were better at conducting user tests for this project, which | believe helped us a lot. We were a lot more proactive during this project. We had our soript and user tasks created before other groups which helped us recruit users a lot quicker. The fact that we did our user tests early, before most other groups also helped us a lot. | think our research for this project was also a lot better organized and we were able to figure out together what information was important and what wasn't.Areuos a? Using Your CLAS Prescribed WordPress Account: ‘A quick startup guide wth defnitions of key phrases, and instructions on basic use for your UNC Charlotte faculty Key terms: Customize -modify the page to suit a particular individual or task. Dashboard -a home page on a website giving access to different elements of the site's functionality. Header-a line or block of text appearing at the top of each page of a book or documer Navigation Bar -appearing on the top ofthe page and on the lef, tis used for making |?) Post -an online posting, more specifically in this case, a posting on WordPress. Previous Page Button ~a button that allows you to go back to the page you were on before the current page you are on. Widget - an application, or a component of an interface, that enables a user to perform a function or access a service. Suber 7+ —— Sedrmite ty —— Dee. ———— ® NWCreating a New Post While having your own site is important, itis also equally important to know how to navigate through WordPress to create @ new post. Posts can be about any topic you see fit o enhance your page. 1. Onto the top of page navigation bar hover your cursor over a the button that say “new”. int: Do not click on it, hover over 2. Adrop down menu should appear, now click the “post” button, 3. In the box where it says “enter title here” give your post the desired title 4, Include the desired text for your post in the box below. (Suggestion: Click the button that says add media to add any type of media files you may wish you add) 5. On the right side of the page, click on the “publish” button to publish your post. Move to Trash Comment on a Post Stay in contact with your fellow faculty and staff members by leaving a ‘comment under a post that interests you, or even to respond to a comment left on your post. 1. Find a post that you wish to add a comment to. 2. Click the title of the desired post. Ca 3. Look to the bottom of the post and find the comment section. 4, Type up your comment and click “post comment”. (Hint: To delete a previously posted comment, simply find your comment under the post, look to the top right of the comment and click the “x” to delete it) Leave a ReplyAdding a Widget Widgets are fun tools that enable you to make a page more visually pleasing, and helpful to whoever is on your page 1 2 Locate the navigation bar at the top of the screen Click the button that reads “customize” and a menu to the side should appear on your screen. In the menu, scroll all the way to the bottom and select the option x for “widgets” > ate eoeitf Select from the options thatvailable for where on your page you want the widget to appear. (Hint: If you Want your widget to See appear in the right side bar, select “right side bar”) After selecting your desired location, click on the “add a widget” ——— button and then select the type of widget you want from the list of "*¥er"™™se options. sxagoondc + Add a Widget Once clicked it should automatically appear on your page and you Sartine will be given options such as being able to add a title to the widget.‘A Usability Analysis Report of the CLAS Faculty Pages Interface ‘Submitted by: Katie Calabro Rabee Khan ENG 4181, Writing User Documents Submitted to: Dr. Wickliff, Assoc. Professor of English ‘Alex Chapin, Executive Director, CLAS Office of Academic Technologies Ceily Hamilton, CLAS Director of Information Technology pre)Executive Summary For our ENGL 4181 Writing User Documents class, we were tasked with analyzing the usability of the CCAS faculty and staff WordPress interface, as well as coming up with a helpful reference guide to solve clarification issues. We created a simple task list to test the site and how much our users could navigate it fthey were fo create their own page. We chose two different users, both in the CLAS department, cg ‘and both of hich also do not currently have a faculty page on the site. One user ashes being very technology oriented and familiar with WordPress, while our other user was unfamiliar with both technology and WordPress. This contrast of user abilities led to interesting findings about how usable the actual CLAS ste is for University of North Carolina at Charlotte faculty and staff. ‘The usability ests were performed in an environment that would make the user feel comfortable. One of the users Gre-sble To se par owmrcamputer inthe office athe colege, while the ther asd e Mac in our classroom. Each participant was read aloud the same task list, and was observed by a group nt notes. The users both had a lot of problems getting started on completing member wha took di the wes realized what screen to be in, and how to get started, they both figured out what to do next verY easily. The first user took about 10 minutes of time to complete the entire task lst, while the second user took about 30 minutes to complete all of the tasks. This seemed to correlate with their familiarity with computers. The most notable difficulties were broken down into two main groups of problems. 1. Layout and Design ‘© Inability to locate the top navigation bar ‘¢ Misunderstanding the dashboard feature © Overseeing the left navigational bar Much of the layout and design problems came from the user not using the top and left navigational bars. The site's functions al rely on those two features, and both users tried to edit and create things without noting those buttons. When a user finally understood that those were the key to creating on the site, they both were able to go through the tasks very easily. The users both had frustrations with the dashboard feature of the site. Neither of the users could understand how the dashboard and the? _» oL@™~ ‘editing preview only let you do certain things in those views. paolo i 2. Content, and the User ae. a «© User frustration with tasks ee ane « Lack of user knowledge of key terms ne The usability testing uncovered a lot about the users/who took the test, but also it showed that there is an issue with understanding “how to get started” with getting the tasks completed. Both users used expletives by the end of the tests because of how frustrated they got withthe site. When considering that the first user classified thdmsélves/s a proficient WordPress user, it does not add up that they had trouble using this CLAS site. This brings up the question of how different this site has been changed by _. A#25C UNCC L., and also how we could help future users get through this initial confusion. contusion fver not only the navigational bars, but also simple features such as widgets and the dashboard.Contents Executive SuMMALY enn Introduction. Methodology... Test Results . Findings and Recommendations .... ean an References...A Usability Analysis Report of the CLAS Faculty Pages Interface Introduction WordPress is an open source program that many differefif companies use for their employees. UNC Uses it across their different departments. Our group's focus in this report is for the College of Liberal ‘Arts and Science (CLAS)nd the faculty who have access to it. The CLAS page is designed to host different sites, cushion not limited to projects, research, blogs, and faculty and staff profiles. If a faculty member wishes to create a site for one of those purposes listed above, they can request it through the CLAS page overview. Faculty members at UNCCaalso have the option of creating their own, > by logging into the site using their credentials. yancorre Alex Chapin the Executive Director of CLAS Office of Academic Technologies and Celly Hamilton, the CLAS Director of information Technology contacted Dr. Wickliff in the English department to help conduct usability testing on the CLAS faculty and staff pages. The overall purpose of these usability tests would be to create reference guides or tutorials, making it easier for the faculty and staff to use and understand more about the pages they have access to creating and editing. Our team, which consisted of two people, devised a task list for usabyity testing that explored various, popular eu igs of the UNCE CLAS pages, Layout and Design problem: ve Content, Language and User problems. The goal of the results from the usability tests wif the information collected to the executive director, Alex Chapin and the director of information technology, Ceily Hamilton, as well as fe reference guide created from these results The scope of this report will addr wh the two main issues with the CLAS WordPress interface, beinpre Methodology {In an attempt to replicate the users of the CLAS faculty and staff page, our group recruited two faculty members of UNCEto partake in our task list. Both users did not currently have pages on the site, and the one who previoulfhad one did not create her own site, but had help. Our group recruited, participants by me out emgils and got one user through the help of Dr. Wickliff who collected a participant from their office, To recreate the environment in which the user would be using the site, we ‘wanted our users on computers or in an office they were comfortable with. ‘Once our participants were ready and comfortable we asked them a set of weft ns to analyze how familiar they were with WordPress through CLAS and their current feelings on the site. Asking these ‘questions before the tasks were completed became essential to how much they learned through the User test and how we could cater the reference guide to them asaUser® ot. (Name ang Tie of User) Prefitations: nx 1. Ate you familiar with using the UNCG WordPress site for faculty/staff a. If yes- How often do you use and edit this site/these sites What do you like about this site? Are there any features that could be improved or taken out? Do you fee! that having access to edit your own site helps fulfill the purpose of these sites? Would you consider a tutorial or reference guide if one was available to you? Do you know what a widget is and what itis used for? After the refine _pre recorded, our group pyre facilitator read aloud the mae task list and encouraged 1. Maman pos, add atagtol etagae (ate nse he tno cic he cntomion the user to think out baton) loud through their 2 Commenten someting execution of the tasks. We reminded our users 2 Deletes comment that the test was on the 3. Change the Tile Heade to “Good ping UNCC" CLAS faculty and staff webpage, and not the 4+ Change the Header Image to someting you tke more Heenan ae & Tryto ark widget tote footer coun 1 not provide assistance to the users when they had {6 Change the exer to match your ut questions about the site, and only provided guidance if a user took an exceptionally long amount of time or expressed great frustration with how to proceed with a task.Following the completion of our task list were the postfuestions. These were also read aloud to the User once the test was completed. The purpose of these specific questions were to gauge how much the user learned through the test and what their opinions were for what could be improved on the site or with a reference guide. Post Questions: 1. Did you feel frustrated with the navigating this site? a. What in particular did you feel frustrated with? 2. Did you learn of any new features while doing this test a. If so- what were they? 3. What do you think went well with this test? 4. Do you feel more or less confident with using WordPress through UNCC? Z Test Results 4 Looking at the postfuestions, both users s-tegt had some experience with WordPress but it was not direct experience with the Charlotte's CLAS WordPress. For example in the case ots ith our first user, {HeYdid have experience with WordPress but used it through Forbes rather than neritic tomentose ‘our second user had a page with UNCC. someone else had created it. Both users agreed that having a reference guide or tutorial on how to use the UNCC WordPress would be useful Problems that were encountered during the tesfwere also similar between both users. User one and user two had a dificult time trying to figure out how to add a comment. Although our first user figured ‘out how to add a comment, what Src not figure out was how to delete the comment posted. User one remarked that knowing fow to delete a comment is the most important skill to have. Our second user then had trouble remembered where some of the buttons and icons were located, such as the save and publish button and the previous page button. Throughout those problematic encounters, our users were able to do everything else on the task list without much trouble. Our group narrowed down these problems to design problems, language problems, user frustrations, and a lack of. affeasiy accessible reference guide.Findings and Recommendations ‘What we found from the user tests is that WordPress is a powerful tool that not only helotslay information about faculty and staff to any person who needs that information, anc it also has many features that can be confusing. The biggest problems we encountered, rove many of the users were either unaware of some of the featureS of simply just did no jw to use them. We believe that there are some areas that can be improved on, such as making comments easier to post and delete, and having a more accessible and visible save and publish button. Below are some recommendations on how we believe those changes can be implemented. Having a more accessible comment section: To currently add a comment you have to visit the faculty site, the user has to click the actual pre, post by highlighting the title and clicking it to another page with just the post on it and click the 7 “post comment” option. The reason this created a problem with our users is because of how si?" complicated itis. An easier way to combat this ongoing issue is by having the same comment if "7 box under the original post without having to click on it. Or another way to fix this problem is to \ ‘make the post have a button that has post options on it so itis more intuitive to click it. \ Creating a better save and post optior Our users both consistently could not find out where the save and post options were for each feature. Our group came up with multiple solutions to fix this problem. The first solution could be a small icon or message box that appears over the save and publish button anytime your cursor leaves the text box. This way it would grab the attention of the users and the users would be able to save and publish without having to search for the button. This feature would help 4® eliminate the chances of them forgetting to save and publish. Another solution that we came up with would befmplementMyga pop up that comes on the screen when the user tries to x’ out of the tab or window- asking if the user would lke to save and publish. This pop up feature would help the user when searching for the button because it will come up itself. Ultimately a pop up would take out the chance of the user forgetting to save his or her work. Lovete: In conclusion we found that although there are many poysful tools and features on WordPress many of them are unknown to users, o users simply cannot d@ them. A user guide would provide much benefit to the users and help them in better understanding what they are dealing with. There are some features that are simple features but complicated to perform on WordPress, such as deleting @ comment, if the recommendations we provided are followed we believe WordPress will become more user friendly and more staff members would be open to using iReferences Usability Test Participants + User two, UNCC, completed on 03/16/2016 + User one, UNCC, completed on 03/23/2016 Other supportive sites: * CLAS Pages Overview: https’//clas-pages unce.edu/overview!