User Experience Walkthrough Report

(Accesibility and usability heuristic evalutions combined with cognitive walkthroughs)

Evaluation Completed by: Kathy Moore

URL: http://....

*Date:*July 16, 2007

Scope of Walkthrough

¿ File Picking in Discussion Tool - How do faculty want to pull information into the Discussion tool - from their desktop, another tool within the site or another site? Do they use the FCKeditor for some of these operations or rely exclusively on the filepicker?

User profile(s) and context of use:

¿ Instructor
¿ Student and Researcher profiles are not addressed in detail.

Scenarios:

¿    General Overview (heuristics)
¿    Instructor offers access to a file already added to Resources, using filepicker.
¿    Instructor offers access to a file already added to Resources, using FCKeditor.
¿    Instructor inserts a link to another website, using filepicker.
¿    Instructor inserts a link to another website, using FCKeditor.

Assumptions for this evaluation:

¿ [List any additional assumptions used in evaluation]

Usability Positives
The filepicker's representation of Resources content is similar to the view found in the Resources tool itself, building on familiarity with that tool.

Priority Legend:

High = Task cannot be completed

Medium = Task completed with significant effort and failed attempts

Low = Task completed with minor complications and/or annoyance

Summary of Issues Found

	Usability Issues	Principle	Link to screen shots	Priority	Suggestions for solution
1
2
3
4

Cognitive Walkthrough Worksheet

(issues should be included in summary above)

Scenario 1: Faculty member Barbara Bennet wants her marketing class to discuss a file she just posted to Resources.
She has already created a topic and begun writing. Now she wants to give her class easy access to the file.

#	Step	Comments
1	Miss or ignore link tool in FCKeditor, scroll to bottom of page and find "Add Attachments" button at bottom.	Is this what most people do? Does anyone know?
2	Bring up filepicker, scroll down if necessary to "Select a resource."	Users may have to scroll down to find this menu. In this view, "Select a resource" appears at the bottom of the screen but is not prominent. The first section, outlined by blue lines, looks like where the action is. Both the "Add attachment" headline and the submit buttons give this section great weight, while nothing draws attention down the page.
2		Grouping the "Upload" and "URL" functionality together in the top menu on the page works to save space but encourages the user to blur the distinction between an attachment and a link, which may be one we want to build on.
3	Scroll down if necessary to "Select a resource."	The lower part of the form has the important advantage of presenting the Resources menu in a familiar form.
3		Many familiar tools would let you click on a file to select it. In this case, that opens the file. You have to notice an "Attach a copy" link well to the right.
3		Graying out is a bug on the QA server.
4	Review message	A successful attachment appears at the bottom of the page, below the message
4		What is posted is an attachement.

In the case above, the faculty member might prefer a link to an attachment: she probably owns the file and might like the power to adjust it without having to repost.

That might not be true for a student, who might refer to something he has read in a file and be defeated if it changes without his knowledge.

In the case of a research site or group site, ownership of the files would be more distributed and desired behavior might depend on the social understandings of the group.

We may not be able to predict what behavior 'most' people most want; if so, we might settle for clarifying what they're getting.

What if the filepicker were arranged to show Links and Attachments as two separate areas? What if there were a link utility and an attachment utility?

Scenario 2: Alternate path: Faculty member Barbara Bennet wants her marketing class to discuss a file she just posted to Resources. She has already created a topic and begun writing.
Now she wants to link to the file.

#	Step	Comments
1	Notice link tool in FCKeditor	Do people do this? Does anyone know? Is "linking" to Resources what they think about?
2	Bring up FCK link editor.	Do users know that "Browse Server" is what they're trying to do? (Assume success.)
3	Go to next screen of FCKeditor	This is a pretty scary screen, if only because of the "headline." It doesn't look like other views of the Resources tool or much like the windows or mac file menu. With this few files, we can hope that Barbara sees the file she's looking for.
3		Often I reflexively double-click on the selection and lose it, even though I know this doesn't work. You have to click once on the file. . .
4	Confirm by clicking "OK"	. . . notice the next screen, and click on "OK" at the bottom of the screen - not on the more prominent Browse button, which looks like a submit button.
4		We might really lose some folks in steps 3 and 4, but let's assume Barbara figures it out.
5	Review message	"Good lord that link is big and unwieldy, but I guess it will get them there."
5		What is posted is an link.

Scenario 3: Faculty member Barbara Bennet wants her marketing class to discuss an article she found on a blog last night.
She has already created a topic and begun writing. Now she wants to link to the blog article.

#	Step	Comments
1	Notice link tool in FCKeditor	Do people do this? Does anyone know?
2	Bring up FCK link editor, add link.	"Holy cow!" Link type? Protocol? I just want to link to a website! Oh, ok, here. That's easy enough; I just don't know why they have to make it look so complicated."
3	Review message	"That looks a little strange...oh, there's none of that stuff you usually see before a link." I guess that's ok.

Scenario 4: Alternate Path -- Faculty member Barbara Bennet wants her marketing class to discuss an article she found on a blog last night. She has already created a topic and begun writing. Now she wants to link to the blog article.

#	Step	Comments
1	Ignore link tool in FCKeditor, find "Attach" button at bottom.	Do people do this? I wouldn't, if I were looking to create a link. Does anyone know?
2	Bring up filepicker	Upload/browse is a distraction if you're looking for a web link and accustomed to creating one in a unitary menu in other applications.
2		Do you upload a url?
2		The explanation/help text refers to two of the three possibilities on the page, in reverse order relative to their appearance on the page and omitting the one we want. (Why "Add a new item to a folder?" Why not just add a new item?)
3	Review message	"Where's my link?"
4	Find link	"Oh, I guess I can't put it in the middle of the message. That's odd."
4		What is posted is a link, but the user has accessed it through an "attachment" button, it appears appended to the message like an attachment, and the button below it reinforces the idea that it's an attachement.