14B

In class I worked on studying and on my website since it is for another class. I worked on making it completely responsive.

Week14A

Today in class we talked about the books we read and the two most important points about usability testing. These are to at least do one test and test early and often. I think these are important to know before doing the usability process to get as much information as possible.

In class we continued to work on our writeups/ designs on what we learned. I decided to do the design to continue my documentation. I included both tests and images to illustrate what happened for each tests. This is my final write up.

Week 13B

This week in class we critiqued everyones user experience documentation. From doing 4 different ones, I could tell that a lot of people left out some components.

After we critiqued we talked about user testing and the different kinds. I ended up creating accounts to conduct user testing for the website and my wireframes. I asked questions like where would you click to find the product? What did you like least about the site?

 I also made changes to my wireframe. I took out the annotations so that when they go to test it won't be based on that.

Week13 Outside of Class

Outside of class I finished my documentation of my user experience case study.

Week13 A

For Today we had to have 50% done. I think I had a little bit more but I still had a lot to work on. I worked on finishing my table of contents and specific things that I left out. I finished my first 4 pages.

Week12B

Today in class we looked over my persona, wireframe and beginnings of my UX documentation.
 The changes I made to my persona are:

• being more specific with frustrations
• putting a % on pie chart
• capitalizing USA

Week12 Outside of Class

This week I worked on creating 2 finished panels that show the style of the layout my documentation will take. I tried to make it so that the images weren't just placed and are floating. 

Week12A

Today in class we first did evaluations. Then we took some notes on what our user experience documentation would look like. We have to have a cover page, a table of contents,  an about section, process parts and a summary of findings and suggestions. I started working on my documentation. I worked on putting everything together in one file.

Week11 Outside of Class

Outside of class I created my detailed wireframes. The first one I did was my home page. Based on all of the information and results I got from the content audit, card sorting, and wireframing I created these two wireframes. When I did reverse wireframes for similar sites I noticed 2 major things. I noticed that they almost always had a sidebar with the sub navigation. I also noticed that there was a main image at the top to draw in the user. I also put a welcome section to say a little bit about the business along with photos. I ended it with a footer with the email and shipping so that no matter what page you are on you can acces these 2 links.

This is my sub page. Another thing I noticed was that the wireframes I did had images along with the products. Though they weren't as clear as they should have been, I tried to create a clear way of presenting products easily.  According to my persona the main user wants to find information easily. I also added a description so that anyone can understand what the product is.

Week11B

In class today we spent time going over our personas. When we critiqued our personas today the suggestions I got were to:

• put persona and the website url at the top of the page
• change to hometown on the bio to match the hometown on the top of the page
• change the wording in motivations sections
• maybe add interest of hunting to the quote-get rid of I love to surf the internet
• Include frustrations-maybe he's not tech savvy
• maybe put a section

I made the changes to my actual persona. Here's what it looks like:

Week11A

Today in class we created reverse wireframes for sites that are similar to the one's we are doing. It was based off of content. We had to find 5 different we pages that are similar in content and create a wireframe for the home page and one sub page.  I tried to do different sub pages to see how each website laid content out.
Here are some patterns I noticed:

Home Page

• The navigation is at the top
• I also noticed that most of the home pages have a sidebar that have sub navigation in them 
• They all have a footer at the bottom of the page with links and social media
• I also noticed the home page most of the time has a main image on the front to draw you in
• The main content was usually underneath the main image
• search bar at the top
• shopping cart at the top

Sub Page

• Had navigation, footer and kept the sidebar
• main information had its own box with other images
• I noticed that the sub pages had less content/boxes than the actual home page. The home pages seem a little cluttered
• Some had images along with text to show the products

Week10 Outside of class Cont'd

This week outside of class I worked on finishing my persona. I took the information I found and created an put it into a professional looking format so information is findable. I added some color so that  it doesn't seem boring. I wanted to organize it in a way so that it's easy to follow. The three extra things I added were user goals, entry point, and motivations. I thought those were most important when it came to the Elk website.

Week10B

Today in class we discussed what a persona was. We talked about the most important parts to a persona. At minimum you should have a photo, name, age, location, occupation, and biography. This is  meant to help the designer understand what type of user might go to their site. I called my website's company and they gave me some good responses. I asked who they thought their typical user was and they responded with everyone. Though it's not the best responsive it did make me think of it as more individuals rather than families. I also asked what they want their user to get out of their website. They said that they want their user to find what they're looking for quickly and easily. My last question was where do the users typically go to find out about the website. She said they mainly just do google web searches.

I started working on my persona and getting information. I think the main user would be an older man living alone looking for some different types of food. I came up with the persona of Earl Snyder. This is what I got done in class.

Week10A

On Tuesday we critiqued the different site maps that everyone did. When we talked about mine in a group they suggested that I get rid of the contact us because it was redundant. They also suggested that I move the email to be a cross link off of the home page. The mail to was confusing so they suggested rewording that. I was also told to be consisten with the pink color. I was told to change the tertiary level of pages to the same color as the static page. I also needed to change my key to match all of my corrections accordingly.

Week10 Outside of Class

This is my updated site map. I changed the 3 links at the bottom from red to pink so that it would match with all of the other static pages. I also got rid of contact us page because there didn't need to be a repeat of contact. I moved email us to off of the home page so that you can reach that from the home page on the website and created a clearer name in the key for what it is. I made it a mail to link because technically it's not an offsite page but it is separate from all of the others. I added the home page to the key as well. I also added numbering because that was something I saw on a lot of other people's site maps. I wanted it to be easier for you to find the same information on the table of contents so I updated that as well.

Week9 Outside of Class

For homework we had to take our content audits and findings from the closed and open sorts in order to make a sitemap to show the content of the site. I took the information and put it into a table of contents. I combined some things but also got rid of some things after realizing that they are unnecessary. After conducting closed and open sorting I came to the conclusion that some things should be combined. What I saw in the open study was that when the participants saw that there were different types of meat they not only separated the type of meat but also put all things pertaining to that meat in that category. I originally had a category with meat information. This was condensed under "Meat" because that information would be under the type of meat it pertains to instead of being on a separate page. I also saw that there were multiple pages pertaining to either goat, buffalo, or elk under combination packs. This was condensed based on the study. The study showed that things could be condensed that were redundant. One participant decided that some links weren't even necessary at all. Something else I noticed from the study was that almost all of the participants put the "shopping cart" card off and alone by itself as well as shipping. Based on the user's preferences I put them as single pages off of the home page. This is what I came up with:

ElkUsa Site Map

1.0.0 Home

1.1.0 Shopping Cart
1.2.0 Shipping Information
1.3.0 Email Us

2.0.0 Meat

2.1.0 Buffalo Meat

2.2.0 Elk Meat

2.3.0 Rabbit Meat

2.4.0 Goat Meat

2.5.0 Rainbow Trout 
2.6.0 Deer Meat

2.6.1 Red Meat

2.6.2 Fallow Meat

2.6.3 Whitetail Meat

3.0.0 Combination Packs

3.1.0 Buffalo Packs

3.2.0 Elk Packs

3.3.0 Goat Packs

3.4.0 Combination Meat Packs

4.0.0 Recipes

4.1.0 Venison Chef’s Guide

4.2.0 Venison Recipes

4.3.0 Buffalo Recipes

4.4.0 Buffalo Cooking Tips

4.5.0 Goat Recipes

4.6.0 Cookbooks

5.0.0 Specials

5.1.0 Rich’s Bulk Bargain Barn

5.2.0 Elk Ivory

5.3.0 Velvet Antler

5.4.0 Dog Items

5.5.0 High Country Pies
5.5.0 Organic Granola

6.0 Contact

I also worked on creating my visual site map. Based off of the table of contents I created a site map. designated colors for different pages. I start with my home page with the shopping cart and shipping information coming off of it to show that it is on the home page. I then have my primary navigation in yellow.The primary navigation is its' own color because I want to show that it is separate from all of the other levels. Off of each navigation I having pink boxes to symbolize static pages. Since my car sorting showed that I should group things according to type of meat, I decided to group the types of venison under deer meat. I have a tertiary level with three links off of the parent page. I also have a dynamic page which symbolizes a page that can be changed. The email is also represented by the little letter to show that it is a "mail to" link.

Week 9A

In class today you met with groups of people to analyze what responses they got with their studies. My group didn't go yet so we haven't talked about what I found but in class I organized all of my content. I also started working on my sitemap. I wasn't exactly sure what to do for that because I haven't talked about my findings yet.

Week8 Outside of class (cont'd)

Open Sorting:
What I noticed with open sorting was that group participants ended up creating the same categories just with different names that ended up overlapping. Things like Elk, Buffalo, Deer, and Goat were categories that were pretty much across the board with open card sorting.  2 People ended up organizing the content by adding all of the meats together. In the open sorting many people made a home page with general information like contact and email and an other page because there were some random items.

For the in person open sorts I had people organize the content by the type of meat with other miscellaneous items in their own category. I also had a cooking section come out of an open sort. They also added a special deals category in the open sort. Another open sort was done by putting each type of meat as a category with all things related along with that type of meat.  There was venison, deer, elk, buffalo, and rabbit etc. Other than the food there was a category with Whole, Halves, Quarter. This was the most confusing because I seemed to get many different results.

Week8 Outside of Class

This weekend I worked on gathering all of my content. I set up my websort study so that I could see what a user might do with the information. These are my in person closed studies. What I noticed from my closed studies was that because the categories are already predetermined, many of the user's answers overlap.

This image is what I ended up with when I conducted closed card sorting. I added my in person card sorts to my online sort so I could see all of the information together. What I noticed with my closed card sort  was that most of my content did end up overlapping. Cooking, Other, miscellaneous, and meat information seemed to be the same throughout. What I noticed between the rest was that some of the categories overlapped some. 1/3 of the users made a new group to put some of the info in. Another third put the info into meat information categories. The last third put them into a category based on the meat type. 

This is my closed card sorting in person. 

Week8B

Today in class we had to do card sorting. I started out by doing other people's cards. At first it was confusing to have to put them into so many categories and figure out where things go. By the third one I got the hang of it.

The first person I had sort my cards sorted them according to the type of meat. Each mear had a few cards along with those pertaining to that meat. There was a cookbook category with recipes and cooking tips. Another category was combination packs with all of the meat packages you can get.  Another was special deals with wholes/quarters and the bargain barn. Contact and email, shopping cart.

The second person sorted the cards into the types of meats, elk, buffalo, cooking, contact, info about meat, deals/shopping cart, other foods.

The third person that went categorized the cards into the types of meat each with all meat information in that category, meat selections, combinations, deals, and a category of miscellaneous food/ items.

After observing these I think my favorite approach was the thirds. It had  all of the meats categorized into their meat and anything that fell under that type of meat. To me this seemed the most logical because the categories seemed much clearer to me.

Week8A

Today in class we talked about the different content audits people made. We went over the site and answered 4 questions based on the site and the content. We then got into smaller groups where we talked about individual sites.  Here are some of my additions:
1. more content: shopping cart, bakery items, special deals, books, dog food, dog toys, recipes, seasoning.
2.  The content is mostly organized by a home page with secondary and tertiary links. There are categories on the home page which organize the content.
3. There is no inclination as to who created it but it seems like it might be in house because the images and text seem like they were from this company and the site can be updated by the owner.
4. I think this lives on one server with multiple pages. There are only maybe 2 external links so it all seems like it's coming from the same source.

After that we talked about card sorting. We took our site and wrote down the different pages (main and sub navigation). We are writing them down to get a feel for what the user might do when organizing your content. We will eventually switch with other class members and sort their cards by putting them into categories we think are necessary to organize the content.  I have about 50 or so cards.

Week7 Outside of Class/Spring Break

Outside of class I worked on finishing my content audit. I found it very frustrating because the information was all over the place. There were links that were on the site about 50 times. It doesn't make sense for a user to be that confused while using the website.
4 points:
Content- On the site I chose the content is meat products. Most of the products are deer, goat, buffalo and elk products for anyone that wants to buy it. You can get packages shipped to your house. There are also recipes that you can follow using the different meats you can buy.
Organization- Mostly all of the links are on the first page and it is organized by meat type. They are organized by gift packs, frozen meat, and processed meats.
Created By- I think whoever created this site knew a lot about the type of meat they had and the product but not much about design and user experience. They had no knowledge of how confusing it might get for the user when they come to a site like this. Signal and cue are lost in this site.
Where it lives-I think when it comes to where does the content live I might guess that this site is on one server with many different pages. There aren't a lot of off site page sources so I would say most of the content is html.

Week7B

In class we used the website that we found to start a content audit. I started working on my content audit color coding and numbering so that the information can be found easily. I am in the process of finishing the cotent audit. So far I've only made it through about 1/4 of the navigation on the home page.