The website I’ve chosen for this assignment is a website I frequent when looking for parts in my mascot-making. It’s called DreamVision Creations and it can be found at https://dreamvisioncreations.com . I asked a friend and coworker of mine who knows nothing about my craft to see if they could complete a few tasks I had for them. They are 29 years old, and a very competent user. This type of site is a specialized ecommerce site. It is laid out similarly to other ecommerce sites for small businesses, but without any knowledge of the craft and terms, it may be overwhelming to a new user. My user frequents mainstream ecommerce sites for small businesses such as Esty, and Shopify.
I gave my user three tasks: 1. Find a foam equine/horse head base, 2. Find the shipping information in its various locations, and 3. Find a one-inch fan powered by USB. In my observations, I did ask them to “take in the site”. I wanted to see how easily they could identify what type of site it was, and they figured it out very quickly! In their words, “Oh! This is where you get your fursuit (mascot) stuff!” That let me know the information scent of the website was very strong. For the first task, they clicked “Head Blanks” at the very top menu, and the vast megamenu of options for head bases came up. They were understandably overwhelmed, but in less than a couple moments they found the “large horse” base under “Foam” in the mega menu. For the shipping information locations, they found the shipping info in places even I did not see, and I go to the website all the time! I applauded them for that. And for the last task, went just as smoothly. They had next-to-no issues with any of my tasks and the entire test took less than three minutes from start to completion.
While they are a novice user of this site, it has been around for over a decade. I’ve seen it in its infancy when it was just launched under Shopify after they’d moved from Etsy. I will say, they site has made extreme changes since then, and for the better. The site is much more user-friendly, responsive, and attractive in its simplicity. Though the test with my user went very quickly, the test that took them the longest was finding the foam head base. The large menu that populates the entire screen after clicking the button on the menu is very overwhelming. The header text for each category of head base in not enough to break up the wall of links a user is faced with upon clicking. However, the fact that the links are organized under headings made narrowing down the location of the specific species of base the user was looking for aided in the process. As a frequent user of this site, this is a point that I may bring to the webmasters attention at a later date, but for now, I am just happy to be able to watch this small business thrive since its creation.
