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For our users tests, we have 3 2 representative users of our system: an MIT student looking for ways to donate to specific causes, an MIT student who wishes to spread information of his own cause and fundraising, and a student who has not used online donations before and is not a regular donor but would be interested in having a portable way of being reminded about new causes and ways to donate to specific causes. These users were mainly found through our contacts and network. We chose this diverse group of user in order for us to look at the usage of the application from different perspectives. We have decided not to demo our app as we think that by doing it we would learn as much about the learnability of the application.
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- Similar to our first user, our second user did not have much trouble creating an account and logging in. He suggested, however, that users should be logged in after creating an account instead of simply redirecting them to the login page.
- After logging in, our user created a cause. While creating a cause, the user suggested that users should be allowed to enter specific categories instead of picking from a pre-determined list.
- After the cause has been created, the user went on and shared the cause to his friends. He wasn’t initially sure if sharing is similar to invitation. He suggested that users should able to invite friends with personal message each instead of a bulk email.
- One comment our user raised is that profile and account should be merged into one page as it can be confusing to the user how profile is different from an account page. In addition, the search bar wasn’t obvious for the user when he was trying to search for similar causes. He suggested that search bar should be put on top so that users can immediately do searching.
Third user:
- First, I told her to create an account and sign in, which she did easily. She remarked that she liked the simple design and the color scheme.
- Second, I told her to join a cause. She stated that the dimensions of the box fit her screen well, but the search bar was hidden at the bottom and she did not know to scroll at first. Later, she searched for something and received a list of causes. She also stated that the (dummy) causes all looked very interesting. She picked a random one (Save The Whales). Then, she remarked that the placement scheme of all the images and buttons were slightly weird. The buttons did not align very well and looked messy. She also had to scroll through the long description, which was annoying and took a long time. She also did not know how to join or donate until she scrolled to the very bottom. She almost gave up half way. She then clicked on "Add to My Causes" which didn't do anything. It didn't give her a notification that it was added to her causes because the JQuery doesn't work.
- The next task I asked her to do was to donate some imaginary money. She clicked on donate and filled in the amount and messages. She then saved her credit card info and clicked donate. She later clicked on save, too, to save her information. However, it appeared that her information was not actually saved when she clicked "back" and clicked "donate" again.
- Now I asked her to start a cause. She clicked "Back to Search Results" which took her back to the main page (a bug, perhaps). It took her a while to find the button to start a cause because she thought it was at the bottom of the page and tried to find it by clicking on Search again. She later backtracked and then clicked on Start a Cause. She filled in her information (Cause Name: Scholarship Fund for Deaf MIT Students, Category: Education) and clicked create. This took her back to the home page but did not actually place anything there because we don't have a backend and so we cannot actually create causes.
- Finally, I asked her to edit Profile and Account information. She knew where those buttons are now because she had seen them when clicking on Start a Cause. She clicked on each and filled in information, then saved it.
Usability issues:
- Search bar hidden, no directions to find it (major).
- Placement of buttons in information page (minor).
- Save doesn't save information on billing info page (major).
- Buttons redirect to th wrong page (major).
- Buttons hard to find/small/hard to read sometimes (major).