Logan Davis
Introduction
The website that I will be using for this assignment is Sarah Maker, a crafts website with a large selection of instructional articles that my group and I decided on for our overall group project. This site consists primarily of instructions relating to knitting, crocheting, and related techniques. Despite its large array of options, there are still many issues with this website, which I hope to gain some insight on through this assignment.
User
My user is a younger male with a college level education. He is very tech savvy and uses various forms of technology on a regular basis. He has a very basic knowledge of arts and crafts and has not recently used a website like the one being evaluated.
Method
The user testing method I employed is the think aloud protocol, in which the user interacting with the website describes their actions, thoughts, and what they’re seeing. I chose this method in order to get a better understanding of how the user perceived the website being evaluated. Through the think aloud method it is easy for the user to just say what they are thinking while in the process, and for me, the evaluator, to understand their process while they are doing it. This also allowed me to take easy notes on what the user was doing and why, which then allowed me to go back and analyze those notes afterwards.
Tasks
The first task that I had the user accomplish was finding instructions for someone who was completely new to crocheting to the point where they wouldn’t even know where to start. The second task that I had the user accomplish was learning what different kinds of yarn and thread are best for different kinds of crafts. The third and final task that I had the user accomplish was finding a beginner level crochet project that would make a good holiday gift for a friend or family member.
Analysis
For all three of the presented tasks, my user had little to no challenge completing the specified end goals. Each task was completed in a manner befit for someone who is regularly on the internet and technologically savvy. The first task was completed by clicking on the “Crochet” tab, and then selecting the “how to crochet” hyperlink. Because the first task required the user to find something crochet related, my user almost instantly turned to the “Crochet” tab, as he believed it most likely held what he was looking for. From there it was pretty straight forward, with the most obvious route being the aforementioned hyperlink, which was highlighted in blue, positioned toward the top of the page, and stated almost exactly what the user was looking for. For the second and third tasks, the user easily found what they needed to find with the use of the search bar. The second task found the user clicking through a few different articles before eventually finding the one they were looking for, though this did not take all that long nor did it deter or frustrate the user at all. The third task was much quicker, with the user simply looking through the different article thumbnails until they found a craft that was holiday related. Overall, I believe it to be relatively easy for the user to find specific things across the website, especially when using the search bar, when the user can quite literally search for exactly what they are looking for.
Recommendations
While there are plenty of flaws in the Sarah Maker website, none of them seemed to be an issue for my user, or even came up in the process of completing the provided tasks. With that being said, there is very little in the way of improvements that I can offer based off of this evaluation. What I can say though, is that those who are not as technologically savvy may have a bit of a harder time finding more specific things. To those less inclined individuals, it may not be so obvious to use the search bar. One suggestion I can offer is to implement a system that would allow you to apply a filter to the list of postings you are viewing. This could be implemented on the home page, on each separate page of postings, and even on the list generated by using the search bar. Such an implementation would allow for users to narrow down the list of posts to almost exactly what they want, while cutting out any unnecessary clutter in the process.