Survey Questions

I used this resource as a guide for my questionnaire design.

This document basically covers every part of designing questionnaires from defining the research to types of questions and methods of conducting the survey.

I was aiming to collect the following data:
· Where do these people access their Internet?
· How many survey respondents have used a web directory before?
· If they have used an online business directory before, did they experience any difficulty using it?
· Was there a favourite feature?
· Whether they have used an online business directory or not, will they be willing to use one that is specifically designed and lists the local businesses in their area?

Survey Design

The Steps in my Survey Design Project

Establishing the goals of the survey
I wanted to learn what features people use more on a web directory. The choices I provided for my survey respondents were;
· Using the search box
· The navigation system
· The A-Z categories or none of the above


Determining the survey sample
I chose to distribute my survey questionnaire to some colleagues of my husband in his office.
The reason I chose this particular location and group was that these office employees are located where most of the businesses are. They go out to lunch, run errands and/or visit local dentists etc in the same area that I am building the directory for.


Determining the survey method
The survey questionnaires were printed on two sheets of A4 paper with a total of 12 questions and a few lines extra for comments.


Creating my questionnaire
See next post


Pre-testing my questionnaire
I asked some family and friends to read and then try and answer the questionnaire in order to identify any major flaws.


Distributing the survey
The survey questionnaires were distributed to each participant individually.

DON’T MAKE ME THINK!

I absolutely love reading our set text for this unit. Don’t make me think by Steve Krug is just one of those books that I read when I am really bored and almost fallen asleep with those scholarly papers translated from French, and have lost half of their meaning in translation, to wake me up.

It is the common sense of designing sensible websites that I have never thought about. It really does make sense but never looked important to me before.

I wish I had done this unit before my two earlier design units NED11 and 12. Maybe OUA has to work on the order of units and recommend this unit before other NEDs.

PS: only NET35 has those boring papers translated from other languages. I will celebrate when I finish that unit. Same was the case with REA11.

Card Sorting

I will be using CardSort http://www.cardsort.net/downloads.html for the card sorting usability test. Camtasia will record how the test participant is going to sort all the categories.
It is very easy to use and requires little HD space. You do need to have JRE (Java Runtime Environment) on your computer for it to work, nevertheless not a major requirement.


This is how you set it up:
When you start the tool you have two options. Sort cards and create/edit cardset.
You start with create cardset.

Here you can create categories on the right and the cards that will go under each category on the left. Name everything and save the file.

For the actual testing, restart the tool and this time in the main window select Sort Cards. It will assume that the user is the tester this time and ask you for a name so that the results can be sorted later.
Here you just open the file you saved earlier and the tester can start sorting the cards. The white colour cards from the left are dragged by the tester to the right side under the orange colour categories.
It beats manual card making, naming and sorting. And best of all, my tutors will be able to watch the card sorting in action and listen to what the tester has to say about them. I hope they are good at voice analysis :)

Usability Test Recording

I have decided to take Steve Krug’s advice and use Camtasia Studio Screen Recorder for my usability testing. It has a 30 day trial version. It records both user actions on the screen and audio.
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp?CMP=KgoogleCStmhome

It has lots of very useful features. It also lets me collate all my testing videos and create a clickable Flash-like menu for them. Editing is also made easy and the free trial version has no restrictions. How good is that?

Module 4 task

See what other newspaper images you can find online and see what design practices make them easy to read. Which newspapers seem easier to read? Why? What conventions can you find?


The Times Online from UK
I like this website. It displays a big image of the most important news of the day followed by a slightly smaller headline and then few smaller headlines to show the hierarchy of news from the most important to the less important in comparison.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/


My rating for this site: 5 out of 10






BBC News
It does display news article according to their significance, sections are visually divided very well but the feature I find very useful in such a large site is the little map on top of the section menu under the logo. It is clickable and visitors can easily switch to view news in another region in the world.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/


My rating for this site: 6 out of 10





News.com.au
This is my favourite of the 3 websites. There are clear visual clues of what is the most important news of the day. Again, each article is placed in a good hierarchical order to show what is important after the main story. Another usable feature is the list of breaking news. most stories have little images next to them and this gives a visual clue to what the visitor might be interested in or not interested in. All sections are divided clearly into different categories, there is less chance of getting lost.

One of the things I hate about news sites is that they display a video like it is an image and when you click on it there is a video and it starts automatically. News.com.au has a separate list for videos with a heading and little ‘play video’ signs on each image, makes my live easier!

http://www.news.com.au/


My rating for this site: 8 out of 10

Three similar websites

The 3 similar (in design or function) websites are;

1. Ottawa Web Directory dot com http://www.ottawawebdirectory.com/

This site has categorized all the sections very well but has failed to organise it properly on the home page. I think this could have been done better on the left side where most main menu are located but only after they have been generalised a bit more. Right now there are too many categories to fit into any menu structure.

My favourite features are;
· The colour scheme
· The search box, it is clearly identified by the word Search. Also the options or searching the whole web or only the directory is given so that the visitor will know which one is being searched.
· The New listings and Hot listings
· The option of rating the businesses
· The Directory Statistics section

2. Just Derbyshire

http://www.justderbyshire.co.uk/index.php

This site has a nice colour scheme. It makes it clear what the site is about and provides some extra resources and external links, although all of the external links I checked were opening in new browser windows, which explains why their XHTML validation fails.

What I like about this site is how when you click on one of the businesses the details are displayed in the section right next to it. It makes it easier for the user to just select another business if the address seems a bit too far for example.

3. The Streets Network

http://www.streetsofsydney.com.au/

This must be my favourite site among the 3, and no I am not biased because I live in Sydney. I like the colour scheme. I may design something close to it. The categories make sense to me.

Although there is quite a lot of information displayed on every page, particularly on home page, it still manages to look clean and sleek. It provides all the features I want to include in my design, a search box, the A-Z categories and a properly categorized menu.

To top it all up, the site provides very helpful breadcrumbs. I love breadcrumbs. They make it so easy to see how deep the visitor has gone into the site and can just jump back a step or two easily.

It should however warn the visitor when a link is taking him/her out and into an external website.

The Portal/Directory

The website will provide visitors with a list of businesses in Parramatta with their addresses, contact information and website links, if they have one.
The list will be categorised so that visitors will be able to find what they are looking for more efficiently. A search box will also be provided and the A-Z categories will be another addition to the search-ability of the site.

Thinking of the project

I was asked by a friend who owns a business if I can build a website portal for the local businesses in my area. From what I know of business portals they are search oriented and will require quite a lot of planning and research.

NED23 has presented me with this opportunity where I can focus on the basics of researching solutions and designing the site without being caught in the coding and styling, which normally consumes too much time than to allow for proper planning.

So for this unit I have decided to design a business portal/directory for Parramatta area in Sydney’s inner west. I have discussed the project with Marika and Edwin, although I have not received any response yet, I will assume they are ok with it.

Usability Research Scrapbook

This blog is a digital substitute to the required Research Scrapbook for unit NED23 - Internet Design – Usability with Curtin University of Technology. Here I will record the ongoing Usability testing for my proposed final website.