Usability Report 2

Working Title: Single Flower Sangha
Report Author: Peter Ash
Date: December 4, 2002

Brief Profile of Users

Four people took part in the beta usability tests. None was familiar with the Single Flower Sangha (SFS) and all had little acquaintance with Zen.

Think Aloud task

I asked participants to answer three questions using the site. The answer to the first was on the “Teacher” page. The answer to the second was on the “Calendar” page and the answer to the third was on the Zen introduction page.

Summary of Think Aloud

A few problems were uncovered.

  1. The space between the navigation bar and the text was too great in a couple of pages on the Netscape browser.
  2. Three of four testers had trouble answering the third question, “Who was Mumon?”
  3. Looking for the date of the next sesshin, some testers went to Sesshin, not Calendar.

Summary of Posttest

  1. The first tester recommended using any color other than white for unvisited links, as they looked too much like the rest of the text.
  2. One user felt the “Three Jewels” page did not look as calm as the other pages. Suggested text should be wider, and more space between graphics and text.
  3. One tester was skeptical about the use of a horizontal menu on the home page and a vertical menu on the other pages, but allowed it “seemed to work”.
  4. One tester suggested that the “Support” tab was badly named. Suggested renaming as “Donations” or “Membership”.
  5. All testers said the design was visually striking and felt calm.
  6. One tester said she liked that the small lotus logo link on second-level pages takes you to the home page with a large lotus logo.
  7. One tester was surprised that the “Teacher” tab link and the “way of teaching” text link on the home page did not go to the same place.
  8. Writing is very good and  inviting. Organization of space is good. Contact information page is especially good, except some vertical menu items align with text, when the two columns are unrelated.

Findings to be Implemented

I fixed the column spacing in Netscape browser problem (again).

The “way of teaching” text link will be changed to have the same target as the “Teacher” tab link.

White unvisited links were changed to yellow after the first test. This seemed to be a definite improvement.

“Support” tab link will be changed to “Membership”.

I will make some changes in the “Three Jewels” page to make it look less crowded, and see how that works.

Findings that will not be implemented

I won’t make a change to make it easier to find “Mumon”. I decided that this was an unnecessarily difficult and unrealistic task.

Since most people who looked for the date of the next sesshin under “Sesshin” soon found it under “Calendar”, I decided no change was necessary for problem #3.