Mitchell Decker 303 – Intro to Web Publishing

Usability Test for UnionStation.org

Test Preparation

When beginning the preparation to conduct these tests, I decided to go to the library

building since it seemed like the most natural location for a walkthrough like this. I also had

already tried to conduct these test at my apartment, but my roommate had invited people over

and I was not productive at all. When I got to the library, I sat in the larger seating area of the

first floor and kept away from the Starbucks location since I thought that it would be too

distracting over there as well. There were hardly any distractions to speak of since it was a very

slow day during the weekend, my only interruption was from my phone when I was having a

conversation with a friend. The computer that I used to do these tests was the school

designated laptop, with a 15 inch screen and 1366x768 screen resolution and connected to the

internet through Wi-Fi. When I first opened up the UnionStation.org the page loaded pretty fast

even though it is a responsive design. My initial thoughts of UnionStation.org was that it was a

little bit cluttered but all the information was there, you just had to search for it. The design was

very natural looking but took a while for me to comprehend where everything was and its

purpose. When looking closer at the site, there were some social media sharing tools at the

bottom of the page above the footer, which seemed a little out of place but posed no real

issues. The navigation for the site seemed extremely straight forward with little to no

guesswork, all of the navigation tabs were single links with no sub tabs under. The fact that

UnionStation.org was a little cluttered makes a big impact on how well a user goes through a

page and obtains their desired information. Since the site is cluttered, it takes more effort on

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the user’s part to search for their information, which could easily pass the 10 second time span

for them to get bored with what they are doing and move onto something else. Overall, the site

has a nice color scheme but a cluttered layout that takes a while to comprehend which could

cause some user experience issues in the long run.

When starting the first task, I looked from left to right along the navigation bar

attempting to see something that related to wheelchair rentals, which led me to the “Plan Your

Visit” tab and selected it. When the page loaded, I scrolled for quite some time, looking for

assisted viewing or something like that, when I found a section called Amenities and

Transportation and clicked on the “Guest Amenities” link. I read through the information on

that destination page and discovered that wheelchairs are available at the information booth

located in the Grand Hall. The only issue is that they are not able to be reserved and are on a

first come first serve basis for their guests at no charge, which may pose a problem when you

get there and all of them are currently being used. I have completed the task in a very short

amount of time, even though I have never been to the site before which shows that the

developers definitely took the Match Between System and the Real World heuristic into

account, making the navigation simple to understand and in common phrases. My success in

completing this task was practically straight forward and had very little issues, but I did have

some complaints. I would suggest that UnionStation.org make it so that Amenities and

Transportation for their guests be rented out and put on hold so that those guests who planned

ahead would be guaranteed the assistance that they require.

When moving onto the second task from the first, I directly went to the “Events

Calendar” tab since it seemed like the most logical tab to go to when searching for a specific

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date. When the page loaded, I saw that there was a widget on the right of the page and

selected the arrow to go to the next month and then selected the 25th. When the schedule for

Wednesday, November 25th opened up, I was a little confused on how the events were listed

once the date was selected. I also had a little trouble figuring out which of the events were for

the Extreme Screen movies and what were not. I also had to read through each of the events in

order to make sure that there were not anymore options for movies. After looking through

them all, I realized that there were only 2 Extreme Screen movies, Jerusalem and Robots 3D. It

would be a really nice feature to be able to filter out the different types of events, this feature

would make it a lot easier and faster to figure out how many events of the specific type you

have to view. I completed this task with relative ease again, but with a few more steps and a

little more headache involved since I had to read all of the events in order to determine

whether it was an Extreme Screen movie or not.

On the third task, I decided to get tickets for Robots 3D so I selected the link “More Info”

on the little description of Robots 3D. When the page loaded I scrolled past the large image of

the movie and saw the link “Buy Tickets” right underneath the show times description and

clicked it. After reading through the little description of the movie, I scrolled down and saw that

the ticket price would be $6 per person and then I selected the “Ad to Basket” button which

brought me to another page where I was able to order the tickets. I used the up arrow on the

quantity section to purchase 2 tickets and then selected “Add to Basket” again which brought

me to another page that was cluttered. I saw the option to “Select Seats” and clicked it, but it

only sent me to the previous page. I realized that the tickets only allow you to have General

Admission, so there could be specific seating for wheelchair bound people, but it was on a first

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come first serve basis just like obtaining the wheelchairs. I would suggest to the developers to

make this issue a bit straighter forward, since some people may not realize this issue right away

and get frustrated. The completion of this task was very simple but had a few issues since there

was no real way to select specific seating for me and my grandmother.

When I got to the fourth task, I had to go back to the homepage because I could not find

anything on the buying page to link me to any contact page. Getting back to the homepage was

a little confusing, since I thought that the logo would link to the main page, but it only linked to

the tickets purchasing page. So when I retyped in the UnionStation.org into the address bar, I

instantly went to the “Contact” tab and waited for the page to load. My first impressions of this

page was that it was far too cluttered and lost its straight forward approach that it had at first.

The long list of departments and their relative emails made me want to drift off while I was

looking for the appropriate department for the task. I thought that the “Visitor Relations”

department would be the most appropriate department to email about how much space is

wheelchair accessible. The only issues that I thought this task had was a way to escape from the

ticket purchasing page, and then a better list of the different departments. The way this task

progressed was far more difficult since there was no way to get back to the homepage

whenever trying to leave the ticket sales. Other than the issue of getting back to the homepage,

most of this task was straight forward and simple.

My initial thoughts of this website were that it was really cluttered in its approach but

had a straightforward feel to its navigation. Once I got used to the navigation and the way that

the developers placed their content, I knew exactly where to go for what I needed. The first

task was completely straight forward but had some issues with too much scrolling on the “Plan

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Your Visit” tab. When the second task came around, all that was needed from the events list

when a specific date was selected is a way to filter results instead of listing every one of them.

On the third task, it was straight forward, but had issues getting back to the homepage from the

ticket buying page. On the fourth task, the email list was a little dreary to look at, but posed no

actual issues. Overall, the website has very straightforward approaches to completing certain

tasks, but has a few issues per task that are just small usability issues.

Choosing Participants

Tester 1: Hannah Jahal

My first tester is Hannah Jahal, who is a lifelong friend who currently goes to Northwest

Missouri State University. The reason that I chose Hannah as one of my testers is due to the fact

that we are practically opposites from a web browsing perspective. Hannah is a huge theatre

nerd who does a lot of online browsing and gaming which is a very unique combination of

interests, and one of Hannah’s many browsing habits include having hundreds of tabs open on

her browser at one time. I believe that she is a reasonable person to test since she should have

a very different thought process on how to go about completing these tests compared to me

and my second tester Christina Decker. As I have stated above, her name is Hannah Jahal and

she is 21 currently getting her Bachelor’s degree in theatre and communication arts, and is

currently not working anywhere. She has never been to UnionStation.org but has been to the

physical location when she was in junior high school. Hannah has been using the internet for a

long time, mostly for video games, but she goes onto sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest

and YouTube as well. Hannah will be listed as my low experience tester since most of her

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internet activity is only on social media sites and video games, while hardly ever visiting

anything else.

Environment for Tester 1

Location of Test

o The test was conducted in Hannah’s residence hall since she spends most of her

time in the commons area of South hall. Hannah spends most of her time

browsing while sitting in the commons area, other than that, her browsing is in

her classrooms doing classwork.

Physical Environment

o There were very little distractions to speak of when we were going these tests

since we started it at 11:30 at night when most sane people are asleep. There

were very few times when people Hannah knew would walk bye and ask her

how she is doing and talk for a few seconds. Her phone rang a few times, but she

just ignored it and continued to do the tests. The lighting for the building was

very bright, and actually made it hard to read her screen at its current

brightness. There were not special smells or other devices keeping us distracted,

which made this test seem a little too straight forward and clean.

Technical Environment

o The computer that Hannah was using is the schools appointed laptop, which is a

15 inch screen with a 1366x768 screen resolution. The connection speed for her

computer was directly from Wi-Fi and never anything else since she thinks that

an Ethernet cord is too much hassle. The browser that Hannah was using was

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Google Chrome, since she does not like how slow responding Internet Explorer

is. She had an add-blocker add-on from googles play store integrated into Google

Chrome because she goes onto social media sites that like to spam ads. The

Above the Fold space on her laptop was identical to mine since we both tested

the site on our school computers. The space allotted was more than enough,

allowing the viewer to see almost all of the desired Above the Fold information.

Tester 2: Christina Decker

My second tester is my mother, Christina Decker and the reason that I chose her was

because she is from another generation of web users. Christina was in her twenties when the

internet started to be standardized, so being able to view the browsing habits of someone from

that generation would help with averaging out the testing. As I have stated above, her name is

Christina Decker and she is 49 years old currently running 2 businesses both started in the

family. The first is a bike shop called Midwest Cyclery started in 1973 by my grandparents

August Baanders and Christina Baanders, and the second is a lawn care business called Decker

Lawn and Landscaping started in 1993 by my father Robert Decker when he was in his twenties.

Both businesses have social media coverage that is run by Christina Decker which is why I

decided to have her as one of my testers. Christina has been on UnionStation.org multiple times

and has planned trips for my family multiple times. I have decided to make Christina my high

experience tester since she runs both businesses social media accounts as well as taking care of

all of the other home ownership responsibility’s that take place online like paying bills. Another

reason that she is my high experience tester is because Christina used to be an employee at the

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IRS for 10 years where she was online constantly, fixing and thinking critically about issues that

have a tenancy to come up when dealing with taxes.

Environment for Tester 2

Location of Test

o The test was conducted at my household since it was the most natural location

for Christina, also since she is my mother and we live together with my dad and

brother as well as my many animal companions. The reason that we chose this

location was because Christina does all of her social media updates and replies

for the two businesses here, as well as any personal web browsing.

Physical Environment

o The lighting was very minimal in the living room since we only have two lamps in

the corners of the room, but there was still more than enough light to conduct

the tests. The distractions presented were very small but in great numbers, since

we have 2 dogs and 2 cats in the household we had many interruptions from our

furry buddies who wanted attention. More interruptions were of Christina

getting distracted and asking me questions of how my week has been going and

how classes are progressing. The temperature of the room was chilly since my

parents like to leave the windows open all day to keep fresh air in the house.

There were also many sounds since my mother was in the process of cooking

spaghetti and meatballs at the same time, but this did not cause too much

distraction since my dad decided to do it for her. Phone calls were the biggest

cause of distraction, since my parents are busy and cannot ignore phone calls.

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Other than that, most of the remaining distractions came from the television

program my brother was watching at the same time.

Technical Environment

o The computer that Christina was using was her MacBook Pro that she got for

business work, which has a 15 inch retina screen at 1920x1080 screen resolution.

She was using Google Chrome since she does not like the way that the Safari

browser works. The space that was visible for Above the Fold was not very much

since she has the screen zoomed in a decent amount to account for her eyesight.

As for her connection speed, she constantly uses an Ethernet cord whenever at

the house since it gives her a lot more speed.

Test Results

Initial Site Thoughts

Tester 1 Report

o Hannah’s initial thoughts of the page were that the page was pretty, but she did

not really like how wide screen it was, it seemed like it took up too much space

that it was a little overwhelming. When Hannah was looking at the main page,

she was scrolling fast and not really paying attention to anything in too much

detail, I asked her why she was doing that and she told me that she was just

looking for things that stood out to her. She thought that the page looked nice,

but could have done better by shortening the amount of information that they

put on it. Hannah also said that it would be good if they had some drop down

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options when the user hovers over the navigation, it would make it more

detailed and easier for her to find exactly what she wanted without having to

search through each tab. After scrolling for a little bit, she decided that she was

familiar enough with the homepage and said that we could start the tasks.

Tester 2 Report

o Christina opened up the site and stated that she remembered going to this site

at one point, but did not remember much about it. She started by reading

through the graphics that you see right when the page is loaded, commenting on

how fun it would be to go to these events at some point. She then decided to

scroll through the site, but she took it a little bit slower, making sure to read

every word. I asked her why she was doing this and she said that she was putting

little mental notes where all the little things were so she could remember where

they are when she needed them. After getting to the bottom, she said that there

might be a little too much information on the front page, but it did not bother

her or hinder her in any way. I then asked her if she was ready to move onto the

tasks and she replied that she was.

Task 1

Scenario: You are bringing your grandmother to Union Station for a Sunday afternoon

outing. She can’t walk more than about 50 steps at a time. Determine whether or not there will

be a wheelchair available for her to use during the visit.

Tester 1

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After reading the first scenario to Hannah, she said that she was going to go directly to

the “Plan Your Visit” tab at the top of the page, but Hannah said she was going to scroll down to

the footer to check if there was a special needs link down there or not. After she didn’t find

anything at the bottom, she selected the “Plan Your Visit” tab and waited for the page to load.

When the page loaded, she started to read the different content headers and eventually found

her way to the Amenities and Transportation header, reading that they had wheelchairs and

clicked on the “Guest Amenities” link under the short description. When the page loaded, she

read through each header again until she found wheelchairs and stated that they were located

in the Grand Hall at the Information Booth. Hannah then mentioned how frustrating it was that

the wheelchairs were on a first come first serve basis. She thought that it would be better to

have the ability to check them out, so that visitors know that they will get a wheelchair when

they get there, rather than just hope that there will be one available.

Answer:

o Yes, there are wheelchairs available on a first come first serve basis at the

Information Booth located in the Grand Hall.

Completed:

o Yes, Hannah completed this task within a minute of starting it.

Tester 2

Christina headed right to the “Plan Your Visit” tab right away, after asking her why she

didn’t want to look around anymore, she said that this tab was the more straight forward

answer, so she didn’t have to know any other way. When the page loaded, Christina kept

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commenting on how weird it was for the information under the map was not spread across the

map, and was confined to the right side of the website. She too found the Amenities and

Transportation header and read that they had wheelchairs, then selected the “Guest

Amenities” link. After the page loaded, she looked right at the bottom for wheelchair and said

that they had wheelchairs and they were first come first serve. Although, she said nothing

about it being weird that you couldn’t check out a wheelchair like what Hannah and I thought.

Answer:

o Yes, you can go to the Information Booth and get a wheelchair there on a first

come first serve basis.

Completed:

o Yes, Christina finished the task in about the same amount of time as Hannah did.

Recommendations to improve UX for this task

The Heuristic from Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics that most relates to this task

would be the “Match Between System and the Real World” which states that the system should

speak the users language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user. The reason

that this Heuristic relates to the test results provided is because both users, including me, knew

right away to select the “Plan Your Visit” tab to complete the desired task. This proves that the

site was speaking in the users own language, keeping the words simple and straight forward to

a point where users were familiar enough with the concepts that they did not feel lost. It goes

to show that throughout all the stages of development, the developers were really going for

keeping the users in a natural setting when browsing their site.

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An improvement that the site could have taken into account, would be the addition of a

search bar somewhere on the page. This would have been very helpful when looking for

disability accommodations in a much faster way. The reason that this addition should be

contemplated, is because not everyone will know exactly how the site is supposed to work, and

might not be able to figure out what to click to find such information. When this is added in, it

would allow users to search for key words instead of physically search for them. Doing this and

eventually adding in some error prevention to UnionStation.org could end up preventing a

problem from occurring in the first place, which happens to be another one of Jakob Nielsen’s

10 Usability Heuristics.

Before:

After:

Another improvement suggested by Hannah, would be adding in a drop down menu when

hovering over the individual tabs that would contain more detailed sub tab titles. This would

keep the users from jumping from page to page searching for information. I this was added in,

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it would allow users to hover over each tab, and see more detailed tabs that could give them a

better hint of where their information is located.

Before: After:

My last recommendation would be the addition of a checkout or rental button when trying to

reserve a wheelchair for a specific date. This would take all the guess work out of going to an

event and simply hoping that you will be able to get a wheelchair. All in all, this task was quite

simple, but had some very subtle complications that once fixed, could create an even greater

user experience for all users.

Task 2

Scenario: You want to plan to see an Extreme Screen movie during your visit, so you

want to secure tickets in advance. Determine what is playing on Wednesday, November 25.

Tester 1

At the start of Hannah’s second task, she went right towards the “Events Calendar” tab

since it seemed like the most logical tab to select when you are searching for events on a

particular date. Hannah did end up getting distracted by the “cute little Martian thingy” when

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the page first loaded, but eventually went back to the task at hand. Hannah noticed the

calendar widget on the right of the webpage and selected the right arrow button that moved

the calendar over to the November section. Once there, she selected the 25th and waited for

the events to show up. She noticed after a while that there were only two extreme screen

movies showing on the 25th, which were Jerusalem and Robots 3D. She stated that her

grandmother is against “genocide” so she decided to not watch the Jerusalem movie and went

with the Robots 3D. She clicked on the “More Info” link to get more information on the movie

times. Right away, she likes the graphic of the movie, but says that it could be a little smaller

since it is a bit distracting when actually looking for relevant information. Hannah states that it

is $6 per person and the movie starts at 10:30 am, which for her is too early, so she sarcastically

said that she doesn’t want to go see it anymore. She completed the task and said that if she

wanted to secure the tickets, she would click “Buy Tickets” but I informed her that she was

moving onto the next task and asked her to hold off for a moment.

Answer:

o There are two movies playing on November 25th, Jerusalem and Robots 3D.

Completed:

o Yes, she completed the task, even though she did get a bit distracted by all of the

different graphics.

Tester 2

Christina started off by clicking on the “Events Calendar” tab as well, with the same

exact reasoning as Hannah. Since looking for a certain date was the task, she selected a

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calendar to go right to that date. When she got to the page, she went to the calendar widget as

well and selected the next arrow to go to the November section. Christina stated that she liked

the addition of this little calendar since it made it a lot easier than having to scroll through a

huge list of their events. On the November section, she selected the 25th day and looked

through the events list for that day. She liked that the following page showed a little bit about

each individual event, but thought that they should add some way to make it clearer on what

type of events you are looking at. She selected Jerusalem’s “More Info” link and waited for the

page to load. I asked her why she chose that movie over the other one, and she said that it was

because it was the first event on the list. Once the page loaded, she saw that the show times

were ate 11:30 am and the ticket prices are $6 per person. She completed the task in a

reasonable amount of time with little to no trouble with completing it.

Answer:

o The movies are Jerusalem and Robots 3D, and they are $6 per person to attend.

Completed:

o Yes, Christina completed the task without any issues at all.

Recommendations to improve UX for this task

The only improvement that I could see being implemented on this particular task, would

be the addition of a filtering service when looking at the events for certain dates. Adding this

feature would make it much clearer on what types of events there are on certain dates and

how many of them there are.

Before: After:

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On the other hand, UnionStation.org made use of the “Match between System and the Real

World” heuristic again, since they made the words simple for the users to comprehend again.

The “Events calendar” was used in the users language, which made it the most likely option

selected when going about completing this task. Another heuristic used in this task, was the

“Recognition rather than Recall” heuristic, since both of my testers knew right away what the

widget on the “Events Calendar” was used for. This particular widget seems to be a very

common widget used throughout many websites such as trello.com and even shows similarities

to googles event planner. The addition of a filtering service would be a good example of the

“Flexibility and Efficiency of use” heuristic since it would allow for advanced users to interact

with the website a little bit faster and would not really have any negative effects on more

inexperienced users if added.

Task 3

Go through the steps of buying two tickets for an Extreme Screen movie on that day.

Determine whether or not you can choose the actual seats so that you and your grandmother

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will have wheelchair-compatible seating. [Take this step all the way through the process, and

stop only when asked to enter credit card information.]

Tester 1

When Hannah started this task, she said “Can I go on from where I stopped now?” and

clicked the “Buy Tickets” link right above the show times. When the buy tickets page opened,

Hannah thought that it was a little weird that it didn’t just take her to a cart like when buying

off of a website such as bestbuy.com. Then she realized that they call it a basket which is weird,

but then goes to select the “Add to Basket” link. When the page opens she took a little while

reading some of the content noticed that the date was wrong. She went back to the previous

page using the websites built in “Back” button and changed the date which was also a hassle

because now she had to scroll through a tiny list of similar dates to find her desired date. When

she did that, she selected the “Add to Basket” link again and used the little up arrow to increase

the amount of tickets she is buying to 2 so that her and her grandmother could go to the movie.

She then clicked on the “Add to Basket” link yet again which she said was a little redundant to

do, and was looking for a way to change the seating to be for handicap accessible. She found

the “Select Seats” button and selected it, which then sent her back to the previous page where

she selected the amount of seats she was purchasing. Hannah did this multiple times and

eventually said that the site was either glitching or it wouldn’t allow her to choose specific

seating. Hannah also did not like the design of the basket page, it seemed too cluttered and

very confusing to comprehend. Hannah then summed up that it was not possible to get a

handicap specific seating for her grandmother, she selected the “Proceed to Checkout” button

and was prompted to create an account in order to buy the tickets. Hannah was not too happy

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that they were forcing her to do this and compared this site to other sites that did not ask for

an account to buy tickets.

Answer:

o No, it is not possible to select the specific seating.

Completed:

o Yes, she completed this task, but had quite a few issues doing so which was

testing her patience.

Tester 2

Christina took a similar approach and just selected the “Buy Tickets” button above the

show times listing. When the page loaded, she realized that members must be logged in to get

discounts, so she decided to log in with her own account that she already had and then clicked

the “Add to Basket” button. Once the next page loaded, Christina thought that it was a bit

weird that the page was practically the same thing, but just had a new section below it.

Fortunately, she noticed before she clicked the next button, that the desired date for the event

had been reset to another date. After she changed the date back to the correct day, she

selected the “Add to Basket” button once again and waited for the next page to load. She

pressed the up arrow and selected 2 for general admission, which she questioned as being the

only seating option. She then clicked on the “Add to Basket” button again, saying that it was

repetitive just like Hannah had. When the final page loaded, she selected the “Select Seats” link

and was sent back to the previous page and said “thought so”. So she said that it wasn’t likely

that you could select specific seating, it was just general admission, so it was on a first come

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first serve basis. Christina also said that it was possible that there was handicap specific seating,

but it would also be for those who got there earlier, but that’s just a guess.

Answer:

o It is not possible to select specific seating, but it could be possible that there is

handicap specific seating, but it would be on a first come first serve basis just like

the wheelchairs were.

Completed:

o Yes, Christina completed this task and ran into almost no issues since she already

had an account.

Recommendations to improve UX for this task

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UnionStation.org does not follow the “Consistency and Standards” heuristic since they

renamed the well-known “Shopping Cart” into their own version “My Basket”. This could cause

some confusion since I is stepping outside of the normal and could make users wonder what

the meaning of that specific link is. You don’t want users to wonder what something is on your

page, because it could make them run into problems down the road, with is never good. So I

would recommend to UnionStation.org, that they change their basket back to a normal cart just

as a precaution, so they don’t lose any customers in the confusion. Also, UnionStation.org made

their users have to remember what

they were doing, since when

selecting to buy a ticket from a

specific date, it resets the date to a

default value and forces the user to

reselect that date. This could cause

some issues if the user did not

realize that the date had changed,

and continued to buy the tickets. A

way that UnionStation.org could have prevented this is to follow the “Error Prevention”

heuristic by having a popup show whenever adding something to the user’s basket which

verifies the date they are purchasing their ticket for. This will make it so the user will not

accidentally purchase a ticket for an incorrect date. One more issue that they have is not

making it clear that securing specific seating is not a possibility, this causes issues with “Visibility

of System Status”. If you do not tell the user the status of their tickets, then they may just

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cancel them outright. So fixing this minor detail and allowing users to know that general

admission seating is the only seating available, could clear up some issues and make users more

understanding.

Task 4

Scenario: You’d like to spend time walking around Union Station during your visit, but

you want to be sure enough areas of the station will be wheelchair-friendly. Go through the

steps to send an email to the appropriate person/department to inquire about wheelchair

access throughout all areas of Union Station. [Take this step all the way through the process,

and stop only when the actual email could be written and sent.]

Tester 1

Hannah scanned the current page for anything that would help her find the appropriate

person or department to contact, but didn’t find anything so she clicked on the logo to go back

to the homepage. She ran into the issue that the logo does not lead to the UnionStation.org

homepage, but the ticket purchasing homepage, which she does not like. She had to select the

URL bar and retype in UnionStation.org in order to get back to the homepage, something that

she did not like at all. Hannah had issue finding any contact information, so she went to the

Guest Amenities page again and couldn’t find anything there either. She then face palms and

realizes that there is a tab on the navigation bar that says “Contact”. Hannah clicked on the link,

when the page loaded she squinted and read through the various departments until she saw

the Visitor Relations department. She then clicks on the email, her schools computer

automatically opens up her email program and auto fills in the email address into the mail to

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section. Hannah does not like that it automatically opened up for her, she would have preferred

UnionStation.org have an internal email system that could send an email from the website

alone. Hannah then started to type out the email, but I reminded her that it was not required.

Answer:

o She does not know how much wheelchair access there actually is, but the email

address is Visitor@unionstation.org and once you email the, you can find out.

Completed:

o Yes, Hannah completed this task with relative ease, but she was very frustrated.

Tester 2

When Christina started the last task, she had the same frustration that Hannah had ran

into, she clicked on the logo but was not sent back to the homepage but the ticket buying

homepage. She then went to the URL bar and typed in UnionStation.org and clicked enter,

Christina thought that this was a bit weird to make your users go through. When the homepage

loaded, she went right away to the “Contact” link and clicked it, and started to scan through the

different departments. She noted that there were two different departments that could be

related to finding the amount of access wheelchairs had. Christina said that either the Facility

Rental or Visitor Relations departments could both have information on wheelchair access

throughout Union Station, then selected the emails and thought that they should also have an

internal emailing service.

Answer:

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o If you email either facilities@unionstation.org or visitor@unionstation.org, you

will find your answer on wheelchair access throughout Union Station.

Completed:

o Yes, she found the desired information within minutes of starting the task.

Recommendations to improve UX for this task

A huge issue that UnionStation.org ran into was the fact that their logo from the ticket

buying page did not lead back to the UnionStation.org homepage. Instead, the logo took the

user back to the homepage of the ticket buying page, which is not the best thing to practice.

The heuristic that relates to this issue would be the “User control and freedom” heuristic, since

it has to do with allowing users to go back from where they came. When using this heuristic,

you must allow the user to leave an unwanted state without them having to go through an

extended dialogue to get there. Which having to select the URL bar and enter in

UnionStation.org would be exactly the thing that this heuristic warns you to not do. Although

they have issues with allowing users to leave, when the user gets back to the homepage,

UnionStation.org makes good on their use of the “Match between system and freedom”

heuristic since they make all of their tabs be in the user’s language. This is a good practice when

running a website, because it keeps users from getting confused. I would of course suggest to

the UnionStation.org developers to make all of their logos, no matter what page or subpage of

your website you are on, lead directly back to UnionStation.org no matter what. This will allow

for a consistency throughout the website and a sense of security when browsing that you have

a way out of where you are. I would also suggest to the developers that they change their

“Department Contacts” page content to be boxes of content rather than be a list, since the list

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makes it a bit dreary to look at. But that is not a huge issue to the overall website. My last

recommendation would be that they add a little description underneath the individual

department contact emails, which have descriptions about the department, and the

information that each department can provide for anyone with questions. This will add the

“Help and Documentation” heuristic which will provide concrete steps on carrying out tasks.

Testing Conclusions

Completion Rate:

o The completion rate of my two test subjects was at 100% which is far over the

typical task completion rates of 78%. I believe that this is something that is very

common in today’s ages, since most people are attempting to get better at using

the web for either personal, educational or business related reasons. My two

testers were both female and seemed to take almost identical paths, although

Hannah took a bit more time completing her tasks since she kept getting

distracted by various images. Christina had hardly any issues completing her

tasks, which may be because she had been on the website previously. All in all, I

was very satisfied by how well they vocalized their thoughts when going about

completing these tasks, and am not surprised that they both got 100%

completion rates.

Similarities and Differences:

o My two testers were practically similar in every way when completing their

tasks, they constantly took the “Obvious” path when doing their tasks and hardly

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ever went outside the box. Hannah was the only exception at the beginning of

the testing of task one, since she tried to go to the bottom of the website in an

attempt to find something that related to disability relations. She had found

nothing, which might have discouraged her curiosity when going through the

other tasks as well. Overall, when completing the tasks, Hannah tended to skim

through things, and rush really fast to different steps of the task. While Christina

took her time, and paid close attention to what she was clicking and what was

already selected for her. The difference between these two might be in their age

difference, where Hannah is younger and likes to rush through things in order to

have more time for other tasks. Whereas Christina tends to go slow and steady,

making sure she does not miss anything along the way that would end up having

her be forced to go back a step. Another reason why there may be the difference

in speed, would be that Christina has had far more experience in life, and realizes

that when you take your time and focus on one task at a time, you tend to get

done faster with little to no mistakes. While Hannah is younger and rushes

through, making many mistakes and spending more time going back to fix those

mistakes. Overall, they both did amazing, and helped me realize that generation

differences really do matter when web browsing come into play.

Heuristic Done Well:

o The heuristic from Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics that UnionStation.org

does best would be “Match between System and the Real World”. The reason

that they do this best,

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is because they use real world language when describing their content and have

very simplistic navigation terms. If it were not for the simplicity of their tab “Plan

Your Visit”, I believe that my tester’s results may have been a little different than

they are currently. UnionStation.org definitely speaks in the user’s language,

using common words that are familiar and natural for the users. For example,

when they are showing the content for purchasing group tickets they say “Plan

your next group outing at Group Tickets” instead of just “Buy your group tickets

now.” which are two completely different ways of saying the same thing. The

first way is inviting to the user, while the second is simply demanding the user to

purchase tickets. Another example would be whenever you are reading the

transportation section, UnionStation.org made it seem like the content on the

page seem like a conversation between two friends.

The way that they go about doing this, makes the user feel more comfortable

when reading the content and much more likely to return. I personally like this

usability heuristic out of all of them. If a website does not use the users own

words and phrases, all the content of a website will seem foreign to them

making them feel uncomfortable and unwilling to return. I love that

UnionStation.org talks to the people while informing them at the same time, it is

the best of both worlds, and UnionStation.org does it like a professional.

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