Last weeks usability testing

Even though Christmas is nearly a week away I don’t feel like it is. I usually look forward to Christmas as I get to see all my family but this year I am not. I feel like I have loads of work to do. I still haven’t finished my CSS assignment, I still have some touching up bits to do. With the CSS work if I get a problem I don’t usually know how to fix it and if I done fix them it takes me hours.

The usability testing went good this week, it was quiet boring and I couldn’t do it as a full time job. It was good to get a go at doing it though. As I had set up most of the usability testing I got to read out the questions and guide the users though the web sites with the help of Gary and Shaun. I was abit nervous because I hate reading out aloud.

The software that Shaun downloaded was really useful, there was only one person who said they didn’t want to be videoed which was fine and she actually give us a lot of good written feedback.

The team work seems to be going really well and I have enjoyed it, I wish if we had more time on the course so we could have done the team assignment on it own.

Usability Testing

Usability Testing

Such an eye opening experience! I think that we all agreed that the usability gave us a much valued insight into how people use not only the sites that we have built but the internet in general.

The feedback that we got from the users proved to be very useful.

A large part of my time has been spent waiting for the videos to export from Silverback into .mov ready to upload to a video sharing site for all to see.

The Silverback application has proven to be an invaluable (though it sells for $49.95 ;-) ) & I would recommend it to anyone doing this kind of work; providing they have a Mac of course.

... more to come.

--
Usability is like oxygen - you don't notice it until it's missing.

CMS nightmare!

Building Bob's website this week has been very very challenging! This is the first time that I have ever touched Wordpress, so trying to figure out how it was to integrate into a website using CSS and PHP was beyond me at first. I don't know if I was just too tired when I first looked at the coding for the CMS, but for some reason, the next day when I tried to sort things out - it worked!

This week has been the biggest learning curve for me, firstly getting to grips with the CMS and then also dabbling with the PHP side of things. Customising headers and footers so that content can be generated is tricky and I've still to get the images page to work as we designed it to.

Once problem I have had to encounter this week was concerning images. Putting a background image on things like the header div didn't want to work, which mean our header image and rollover images didn't show up. This problem took me quite a while to sort out, I had to insert the image into the xhtml for it to work properly, which meant that the rollover hovers won't work now because the CSS required them as a background image. It's a small sacrifice when you consider the amount of time and effort that has gone into building this one page.

I've still got a considerable amount of work to be doing, firstly I've got to finish off building the remaining pages to Bob's website and write up a user manual for him. Then when Chris has chosen a design, I need to commence building that website too. We've haven't got much time left before client handover now and I need to be thinking about my evaluation. I would really like my Christmas holidays to be a relaxing time, so would like to get most of the work out of the way for our group submission in January.

The time has gone so fast over the past 3 months, it almost seems unreal to think that around 12 weeks ago, we were just returning to college after the summer holidays.

UPDATE!

We have progress! Watch this space!

UPDATE: I have called Chris & we will have sign off by noon today with all the content by tomorrow! This is fantastic news! His initial thoughts are between 'Design A' & 'Design B' (see below)


UPDATE 12:06: Chris has signed off of design A (see above).

PANIC!!!

I can't really say I was surprised to find out that Chris had let us down again. This puts us in a really bad position. We have so much to do but we obviously can't get on with it until we get signed off.

I have scheduled Tuesday to work on the projects.

Things to do:

User Manual (Chris)
New Design for Chris
Pick out ideas generation for the submission folder.
Start Evaluation

I am happy with the way the build for Bob is looking. However there is a little alignment thing to change. The text should start from where the "Home" link is in the navigation.

Usability testing week

On Monday Bobs meeting went well, there were a few things that Shaun had to talking Bob out of having, but apart from that signing off of the design was quiet simple. One of the things that Bob wanted was a splash page, Shaun said in a nice way that he couldn’t have it but Bob still wanted one then Shaun said they were out of date and he still wanted one. In the end whatever Shaun said didn’t make a difference he really wanted a kind of splash page, and if the client wants it you have to make it.

Bob seemed to really enjoy the meeting and that helped as he gave good feedback and told us everything he wanted.

Chris hasn't been as helpful as Bob this week, the meeting we had planned on Friday he was 1 hour late and then he canceled. I kind of think that he had no intension of coming to the meeting and that was quiet annoying, I would of preferred it if he had said in the first place he couldn’t make it to a meeting and we could have sorted something else out. Now we have to wait till he has chosen the design he likes then we can get on with building it and then testing.

The usability testing is going good, I have the main parts finished I just have to make some more questions and tasks. The usability test as been designed for testing both Bob and Chris’s websites, so alteration to how testing will be done will not need to be changed.

Last push everyone, lets keep at it!

Bob
This week has been eventful to say the least. The meeting with Bob went fantastic. He provided us with plenty of great feedback about the design ideas that we presented to him & we even got a design signed off by Bob [progress]. Bob, though different to anyone that I have met before, has been helpful, considerate of our time scales & accommodating.

Regrettably, the CMS integration is proving to be little more difficult than Sue's research first indicated it would be; this coincided with a limited amount of time remaining is concerning me.

Chris
This concern has only been worsened by the non-reactive responses from Chris. I feel both disappointment & frustration towards Chris currently; though of course I would never let that affect how I deal with him.

When I arranged the meeting with him for Friday gone [5th December] I informed him that was leaving things a little late & that things had to progress before then. to aid this, I created an account with Getsignoff.com, emailed him the details & followed it up with a phone call to ensure that he understood the instructions & process involved; which has so far been three phone calls chasing him.

The great thing about getsignoff is that you can monitor client activity within the site. Unfortunately, this has only shown me that Chris hasn't even logged in yet! Needless to say this isn't great news.

When Friday came around, I was up early [as always] & called Chris to confirm the meeting. We agreed to put the meeting back 1hr to accommodate his travel; not a problem. Then less than an hour to the meeting (Viki & I had met & fanalising our approach for almost two hours at this point) my phone rang... it was Chris cancelling for 'personal reasons' & though a promise to get in touch with me over the weekend so far I have heard nothing.

I will follow it up with Chris tomorrow first thing with both an email & phone call; if need be I will go where ever he is to get sign off.

I am unwilling to let his lack of commitment to the project affect the teams performance. As mentioned earlier, Sue has her hands full with ensuring that Bob's project is ready for the usability testing on Thursday morning; which realistically means that it has to be finished for Wednesday to ensure that things run smoothly.

Usability Testing
The usability testing preparation is almost complete. Viki has prepared the qualitative, quantitative & demographic questionnaires alongside the consent form & tasks for the test subjects to complete at different stages of the test.

Whilst we are currently undergoing major stages of the project, it is vital that the lesser famed tasks do not fall by the wayside.

I have asked Gary to create the hand-over manual for Chris; this will form the starting point for the CMS orientated manual for Bob.

Whilst I appreciate that Christmas is just around the corner, we don't have long left & it has never been more important to retain focus, drive & motivation for the task(s) at hand. Lets keep up the hard work & we can do our selves proud!

Shaun Bellis - Project Manager

Progress!

Today was the meeting with Bob Milner regarding the designs that have been done for his website so far, Shaun contacted me a short while ago to let me know that Bob has chosen a final design and
we're finally in build mode for a website! Woo!

It feels nice to finally get to the point where we've pitched and successfully had a design chosen, there are still a few tweeks to be done - but still, the progress is great. Now it's my turn to really get stuck in and use a technology I've had little experience with - WordPress.

I'm looking forward to getting this build going and finished, so that when Chris chooses a design, we can solely concentrate on his project too. Timing couldn't be better at the moment, we're at the point where we've finished the pitching for the college projects, the eCards are done now (except for final tweaking on Gary's design), so we're ready to move on.

So my tasks for this week are:]

• familiarise myself with WordPress, its layout and how to incorporate it into a design.
• build the template for Bob's website.
  

We have signoff.com

Bob
GREAT NEWS! Bob has approved the below screen design concept; with a few tweaks of course. Bob's enthusiasm has proven to be a real asset during this project. There are a few things that Bob has asked for that are generally regarded as a 'no no' such as a splash page :-S which, despite my best efforts (and I am sure that Viki will agree) there is no detracting him from.

I am sure that the usability testing will highlight the splash page as an issue but until then Bob is sticking to his guns; to the point that he repeatedly renamed the 'splash page' and approached it from different angles.

The design that Bob has approved was a 'make weight' design to fill a void. This has reinforced what Steve has said about 'throwing a design in'.

I felt much more comfortable showing our idea's to Bob around my laptop in a conversational manor than stood in front of a projector with eyes on the presentation skills rather than just the designs.

The minutes from the meeting will be available later tonight.



Chris
Being a fan of the Boagworld Podcast I hear them bang on about getsignoff.com and just had to give it ago. Getsignoff.com is a free to use (basic package) web based application to aid the design approval process. The weakness of the application is commonly known as the client! I have noticed that Chris tends to me more reactive than proactive with this project & has unfortuntly taken some chasing throughout.

Time is moving on now & the next few weeks is going to prove to be extremely busy for us all; I can't wait!!

Almost there.....

I refer to the comment shaun made about there being 6 months left of the course. I make a similar comment "Shit there is only 5 college WEEKS until the end of this unit".

As I type this, Shaun and Viki are pitching our Ideas to Bob.

Design 1

Design 2

Design 3
http://picreative.co.uk/bob

I think design 1 is the most likely design to be chosen as it fits in with his publication. I think it stands out the most in terms of artistic value. I do however think there needs to be something a little more artistic to do with the navigation, in how the "pages are turned"

Design 3 I built on friday to take a little preasure off Sue, I am really happy how it came out. It is my personal favourate. It is pretty simple and plane, it puts the work in spot light. The design was origionally Shaun's I think the header and navigation really worked. After a little re-organisation of content and more thought as to how it would be displayed we came up with the final design.

I enjoyed building this mockup. It enabled me to practice my XHTML/CSS skills learnt in the last assignment.

I am now eagerly awaiting the resonse from bob. Hopefully we will know within the hour.