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The University of the West IndiesThe Faculty of Humanities and EducationMSc Instructional Design and TechnologyEDID6508 Developing Instructional MediaWebsite Usability Evaluation ReportStudent: Sean ThomasStudent ID: 307000917Course Coordinator: Dr. Leroy HillExecutive SummaryThis usability report presents the findings of the website usability evaluation done on the website EDID6508phillipsstewart.. The website was tested using the following criteria: content and layout, navigation, links, background and colour choices, fonts, graphic and image accessibility, copyright and spelling and grammar. A rubric was used to assign a score each for each of the criteria present; a four (4) being the maximum that can be obtained. Maximum possible score achievable is a score of 32 point. The website under evaluation achieved a total score of 25.The table 1 below shows the breakdown of the scoresCriterialScoreContent and layout3Navigation3Links2Background and colour choices3Fonts3Graphics and Images (accessibility)3Copyright3Spelling and Grammar3Total Score23Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc480549487 \h 3Description of the Website PAGEREF _Toc480549488 \h 3Purpose of the Usability Evaluation PAGEREF _Toc480549489 \h 3Method PAGEREF _Toc480549490 \h 4Materials/ Apparatus PAGEREF _Toc480549491 \h 4Evaluation Results and Recommendation PAGEREF _Toc480549492 \h 4Discuss PAGEREF _Toc480549493 \h 6References PAGEREF _Toc480549494 \h 7Appendix A PAGEREF _Toc480549495 \h 7IntroductionDescription of the WebsiteThe EDID6508phillipsstewart. was designed to display the work done by the owner and designer of the website, while completing a course in Developing Instructional Media. The course exposed the own and designer of the website to the following skils: webpage coding using HTML tags; photo editing; audio recording, editing and mixing; video recording and editing; screen casting; examining collaborative tools and using authoring tools for the creation of a multimedia eLearning package. Artefacts of the work done were displayed on different pages of the website.Purpose of the Usability EvaluationAccording to Chum (2012), website usability is “defined as the ease at which an average person can use website to achieve specific goals. states that the goal of the usability testing it to enhance design based on the results obtained. The goal of this usability test is therefore to improve the design of the website. Method Several methods are available to test the usability of a website. The method employed in this evaluation is referred to as the Quality Assurance Testing method. According to Foraker Labs (2015) guidelines are developed that addresses editorial issues such as: grammar, spelling, mechanics, headers, navigation labels, graphics and layout, download time, text layout, colour usage, cross platform compatibility and font-size. A rubric was used (see appendix A) to guide the evaluators scoring based on the following criteria:Content and LayoutNavigationLinksBackground and colour choicesFonts Graphics and image (accessibilityCopyrightSpelling and grammarMaterials/ ApparatusThe website was tested in Mozilla Firefox browser running on an Accer ES 15 laptop with 4 GB of RAM and an Intel Celeron Processor. The laptop has a screen display of 15.6 inches and runs on the Microsoft Windows 10 OS.Evaluation Results and RecommendationContent and Layout – score 3/4The purpose of the website was clearly stated. The header theme used did not draw the user attention to the purpose of the website. Theme changes with most of the pages created. This may not have been the intent of the designer of the site since the hosting server used, controls this aspect of the site’s development.The layout of the site affords the user to easy access to the information presented. The header graphics however, dominates a large section of the pages. This prevents the user form readily seeing the content on the page.Navigation – score 3/4The navigation is clearly labelled and remains in place as the user navigate each page. The navigation, due to the changing header theme, becomes challenging to see. A fixed theme header colour would prevent this from happening.Links – score 2/4 The website is self-contained, there are no links taking the user to any external website. There is one link; however, that takes the user to an external resource created by the designer. All other internal links are working. Background and Colour Choice – score 3/4The background colour chosen was not distracting to the user. The only challenge, as was mentioned earlier, has to do with header background on which the navigation is placed; this has a tendency to create some visibility issues. The background colour used creates a clean and neat appearance of webpages.Fonts – score 3/4The fonts used are easy to read. The designer made used of different font size to indicate headings; only in one case was the heading fonts not consistently used and that in on the Gimp. Html page, “Working with layers.”Graphics and Image – score 3/4The graphic used on the page are related to the theme and purpose of the pages created. The only exception is related to the header graphic used. The images used were of a high quality and they thoughtfully cropped. The YouTube videos could have been edited to remove the unused black area. There appears to be some missing images on the home and about me pages.Copyright – score 3/4The contents of the site were properly cited. Only one image used on the site was cited; this is found on video.html page where credit was given to Google image. Fair usage guidelines were followed in respect to the images used.Spelling and Grammar – score 3/4There were little or no grammatical issues found on the site. The only errors observed were found on the Individual Storyboard page where it reads “launch an interact program” instead of “launch an interactive program.” The next error was found on the group project page where it reads, “to explore this interactive game using to following link” instead of “to explore this interactive game using the following link.”DiscussQuality Assurance Testing is said to be a subset of the overall goal of usability testing CITATION For15 \l 11273 (Foraker Labs, 2015). In competitive market, Quality Assurance Testing should not be the only form of usability testing done. Chum (2012) has suggest that usability is comprised of learnability, memorability, efficiency, satisfaction and errors. A site may be free of editorial issues yet it may not provide a memorable and satisfying experience for users. A site may esthetical pleasing yet users are unable to figure out how to get around it. Based on the test the usability rate of the website under investigation is above average.References BIBLIOGRAPHY Chum, T. (2012). An Introduction To Website Usability Testing. Retrieved from : Labs. (2015). Quality Assurance Testing. Retrieved from Usability First: . (n.d.). Usability Testing Basics. Retrieved from Information and Technological Services of the University of Michigan: webservices.itcs.umich.edu/drupal/.../sites/webservices.itcs.../Usability-Testing-Basics.pdfAppendix A2857500 ................
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