Usability Testing and Reporting 313 Technical Writing

          Part Two: Usability Testing and Reporting Name English 313 Technical Writing Date




Background Summary/Introduction The aim of the usability test is to evaluate testing the site, not the users’ skills. If the users find any part of the interface difficult, this provides insights on the areas and tasks to improve the platform to make it more usable. As such, to facilitate in-depth analysis of the interface, better understanding of the steps followed for credit transfer steps and expressions about usability test are prioritized (Erickson et al., 2013). Participation in this test is voluntary and the users can leave at their convenience. I will collect information about the users’ experience to evaluate their general satisfaction. During the tasks I will not help them, or give clues, if they see them unfeasible they can skip that part. The tasks are linked to satisfaction and performance measures are: navigation of homepage and general impression of the site, assessing whether users can locate the admission option from the homepage and evaluate whether they can find the useful credit transfer information from the home page. This is a usability report on the eligibility of credit transfer at MyMiami based on responses from three users. Methodology The usability tests are mostly carried using methodology that is similar to conducting controlled experiments and results of the test allow a more in-depth analysis of the results make conclusions that are useful to improve the site. In evaluating cases about usability, the users, experience is prioritized and provides insights on their perceptions about the different aspects of the site and overall impression. The user test rather than the heuristic expert evaluation was utilized to evaluate user experience where their observations were recorded depending on how best they were able to carry out the tasks and complemented with a short survey report.   In the test session, the users were requested to visit the MyMiami site. The users then review the site individually and in evaluation sessions that lasted approximately thirty minutes. This is used to analyze and describe the potential problems and results obtained to indicate the problems detected, and the written report is based on what was detected and the way forward.

Details	User 1	User 2	User 3
Demographics	Prospective student (Transfer student), 20 years old and female	Male friend 19 years old and has completed an Associates degree	Middle-aged parent mainly interested in financial obligations and credentials of the courses

  Test Results The success of the users navigating the site partly depended on their experience and functionality of the site.    The first task was determining the overall impression about the site, and the users agreed that MyMiami is well organized and has a professional look as would be expected.  Since the information on credit transfer mainly targets prospective students, they are keen to understand how different factors affect transfer acceptance. Nonetheless, the execution of different actions was straight forward as the users followed the links and information. Ideally, the design of the site should make it easier skip repetitive navigation links to enhance accessibility and improve user experience (Erickson et al., 2013). They also indicated that there was consistency and coherence in the general design criteria, which is closely linked to usability. The three users indicated that the design details facilitated the quick location of information, and there were no technological limitations that affected their ability to access to visit the site and there was user control without requiring registration as is the cases for those already enrolled and have personal accounts. Similarly, there were able to locate the tasks within the required time fame and were able to navigate successfully without requiring further assistance. As the credit transfer page shows links to ex...