UMD+Notes+Usability+Test


 * //UMD Notes Usability Test//**

__** User 1 **__ ** Pretest: ** Male, 18 years old, 25-30 hours of internet use per week, Economics/Finance major, freshman. Poor eyesight. ** User Tasks: ** ** Post Test: ** Rating from 1-7 (1 being easy, 7 being hard) ** Comments: ** Overall pretty easy to use. The notes upload page was a horror to use. All other pages were understandable, the notes preview page could have a more readable layout for the note info.
 * Individual Usability Tests:**
 * 1) Registering a new account - overall user did well on this task. Just asked if he needed to provide his middle name in the 'Full Name' text field when registering.
 * 2) Search for a note set - took about 10 seconds for user to find the search bar to do the search for BMGT402
 * 3) Rate a note - make the ratings clearer, took about 5 seconds for user to find the ratings
 * 4) Comment on a note - after commenting on the note, user wasn't sure where comment showed up.
 * 5) Uploading a note set - make note title and courseID clearer, user wasn't sure what to enter (recommended we should provide examples). Hard to see the file chooser. Did not start with uploading the note first, but went ahead and filled in the note information. When user went back to upload the note, the page refreshed and all the information he filled in was erased. Mistakenly uploaded the wrong note, did not provide an option for him to choose a different file to upload.
 * 6) View their uploaded note set - wasn't sure how to view his uploaded note set
 * 7) Go to your account and view tokens - not sure how to get to his user account. Maybe change the my account link from their username to something saying 'My Account'
 * 1) Registering a username - 3
 * 2) Downloading a set of notes - 3
 * 3) Uploading a note set - 7
 * 4) Sorting search results - 4 (make sort buttons larger, more noticeable)

__** User 2 **__ ** Pretest: ** Female, 22 years old, 84 hours of internet use per week, Public Health major, Senior. ** User Tasks: ** ** Post Test: ** ** Comments: ** The search results page icons need to be moved over a bit. The submit button and start over button on the upload notes page needs to be switched.
 * 1) Registering a new account – no trouble registering
 * 2) Search for a note set – 2 seconds to find search bar. Comment: Make the search bar a little bigger and easier to find.
 * 3) Rate a note – 1 second to find rating. No trouble rating the note.
 * 4) Comment on a note – 2 seconds to find comment box. Took 3 seconds to find where comment went after posting.
 * 5) Uploading a note set – took 2 seconds to find upload note button. When uploading, put the start over button somewhere else, nearly clicked it and started over
 * 6) View their uploaded note set – the website glitched, their note set did not show up even after saying uploading note successfully.
 * 7) Go to your account and view tokens – wasn’t sure how to get to the user account, same suggestion as previous user, make it ‘my account’.
 * 1) Rating from 1-7 (1 being easy, 7 being hard)
 * 2) Registering a username - 1
 * 3) Downloading a set of notes - 1
 * 4) Uploading a note set - 5
 * 5) Sorting search results - 3 (make sort buttons larger, more noticeable)

__** User 3 **__ ** Pretest: ** Male, 20 years old, 30 hours of internet use per week, Computer Science/Business major with Statistics minor, Junior. ** User Tasks: ** ** Post Test: ** Rating from 1-7 (1 being easy, 7 being hard) ** Comments: ** Submit button and start over button need to be in different positions when uploading notes, unnecessary exclamation points on buttons, text vanish in search box, can't search comments.
 * 1) Registering a new account – No validation of password.
 * 2) Search for a note set – Found it easy to search notes, was semi-confused that there wasn't a search box on every page.
 * 3) Rate a note – No problems.
 * 4) Comment on a note – The delay for the comment to appear was longer than expected.
 * 5) Uploading a note set – Could not upload a set of notes bigger than a certain size, preview was not available for some document types.
 * 6) View their uploaded note set – Wasn't sure where to go to easily find his own notes, originally just planned on searching through all notes.
 * 7) Go to your account and view tokens – Easily found the tokens but was unsure of what the tokens actually meant.
 * 1) Registering a username - 1
 * 2) Downloading a set of notes - 1
 * 3) Uploading a note set - 4
 * 4) Sorting search results - 2

__** User 4 **__ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">** Pretest: ** Female, 21 years old, 8 hours of internet use per week, Women's Studies major, Senior. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">** User Tasks: ** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">** Post Test: ** Rating from 1-7 (1 being easy, 7 being hard) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">** Comments: ** Not a very technical person so uploading a downloading notes were semi-difficult. I had to tell them what to click in order to sort search results but understood the concept afterwards.
 * 1) Registering a new account – No trouble registering
 * 2) Search for a note set – No trouble searching.
 * 3) Rate a note – No trouble rating.
 * 4) Comment on a note – No trouble commenting, wasn't sure where the comments showed up.
 * 5) Uploading a note set – Wasn't sure what page to go to in order to upload notes, wasn't sure what kinds of documents could be uploaded.
 * 6) View their uploaded note set – Wasn't sure where to find notes.
 * 7) Go to your account and view tokens – Same as last user, found the tokens relatively easily but was unsure of what that meant.
 * 1) Registering a username - 1
 * 2) Downloading a set of notes - 3
 * 3) Uploading a note set - 6
 * 4) Sorting search results - 5

__**User 5**__ **Pretest:** Female, 19 years old, about 20 hours of internet use per week, Biology Major. No disabilities.


 * 1) Registering a new account – it took a few seconds for the user to find the registration link. This observation may indicate that we need better spacing between our our links or differentiate the links with color.
 * 2) Search for a note set – the user made an incorrect search on the first attempt. The user searched for “bmgt 402” as two strings, rather than “bmgt402” as a single string. Our system should be able to handle both cases as both options may be very common.
 * 3) Rate a note – the user was unsure at first if the star rating was on the notes page was for rating the notes. We should change the “submit” button to read “rate.”
 * 4) Comment on a note – The user did not have trouble adding a comment to a note.
 * 5) Upload a note set – the user selected a set of notes to upload. After selecting the notes, the user began filling out the note title and the “preview” feature of the website refreshed the page and cleared the form.
 * 6) View their uploaded note set – the user needed instruction on what this instruction entailed, but was able to successfully search for their notes.
 * 7) View token count in profile – the user successfully navigated to her profile and found the token count without trouble

**Post Test:** Rating from 1-7 (1 being easiest and 7 being hardest) **Comments:** The user noted that that the website was relatively easy to use. However, she suggested that we clearly explain somewhere on the website how the token system functions.
 * 1) Registering a user name – 2
 * 2) Downloading a set of notes – 2
 * 3) Uploading a set of notes – 3
 * 4) Sorting search results – 5

__**User 6**__ **Pretest:** Male, 22 years old, about 35 hours of internet use per week, Electrical Engineering. No disabilities.


 * 1) Registering a new account – the user was able to immediately find the registration link and successfully register an account
 * 2) Search for a note set – the user misspelled the search query on the first attempt and returned zero results. He successfully searched for notes containing “bmgt402” on the second attempt.
 * 3) Rate a note – the user was able to quickly find and rate a note set using the radio buttons.
 * 4) Comment on a note – no issues commenting on a note, but the user was not able to view his comments
 * 5) Upload a note set – similar to the previous user, the “preview” feature cleared the users existing form data. Also, the user was not able to upload an image (large file) on the first attempt.
 * 6) View their uploaded note set – the user successfully found their uploaded notes
 * 7) View token count in profile – the user successfully viewed his profile and token count

**Post Test:** Rating from 1-7 (1 being easiest and 7 being hardest) **Comments:** The user suggested that we should be able to handle a larger variety of file types and file sizes for uploading notes. Also, he suggested that we not refresh the page when a user uploads their notes because it will erase their form data or that we provide some kind of loading animation to indicate that the note is being uploaded for preview. Lastly, he noted that navigating with the website felt somewhat sluggish for a number of small reasons, such as the strict and limited search query and the fact that textfields did not auto highlight existing text when clicked
 * 1) Registering a user name – 1
 * 2) Downloading a set of notes – 1
 * 3) Uploading a set of notes – 3
 * 4) Sorting search results – 3

= Statistics: =

**Key Comments**:
 * Upload page is too error-prone and frustrating to use
 * Search results table should be better formatted and only display useful information
 * Sorting and filtering functionality was invisible to most users
 * Token system is not apparent


 * Prioritizing Functions Based on Tests** (5 is highest priority)**:**
 * Revamp the upload page - 5
 * Current design of the upload page is unintuitive with most users facing at least one error during the process
 * Integrate the actual token restriction system - 5
 * Currently disabled on the prototype for easier user testability
 * Restyle or redesign the search results table - 4
 * The sorting and filtering functionality has poor visibility
 * Implement an unobtrusive Read Me or guide to teach the user the token system - 3