UW Library Website

A usability study examining ease of study room scheduling

This is a quarter-long usability study project for HCDE517: Usability Studies, completed in Winter 2022.

About the Project

Our team of four executed a usability study of the library website of the University of Washiington (UW), specifically, examining the flow of reserving a study room. We conducted this study with students at UW’s Seattle campus, the intended users of the room-reserving system.

Objective

The goal of this study was to better understand whether there are any obstacles to completing some of the main tasks associated with the UW Library website (e.g., finding information about all the UW libraries and scheduling & canceling study spaces). While we focused primarily on the overall flow of reserving a study room and tasks associated with achieving this goal, we wanted to understand some of the more general pain points of users.

Research Questions
  1. How well are participants able to go through the flow and successfully complete the tasks on the UW Library website? Can they go through some of the main flows of the system and achieve their goals?
  2. What components of the flow are working? What is intuitive and aligns with the users’ expectations?
  3. What are some places where participants struggle? What needs improvement?
Methods

Think Aloud Protocol (TAP), Semi-structured Interview, Post-Task Survey, The System Usability Scale (SUS), Observation.

We started our project with a pilot study to vet our process. Based on the feedback we received, we revised our script and scenarios and discarded tasks that were not informative enough and made the runtime of the test too long. We then tested the room-reserving flow with 5 participants, conducting the sessions on Zoom.

After completing the main tasks, we administered post-task surveys and a post-study questionnaire. We were able to gather quantitative data that allowed us to rate the system’s usability. Further, we conducted short semi-structured interviews before the beginning of the study, after each task, and at the end of the session. The short semi-structured interviews complemented our quantitative analysis findings, allowing us to understand the specific pain points of participants and dig deeper into what participants thought about the system.

What I Did

My role in the process was to work on and iterate on the consent form, screener, surveys, interview script, usability testing scenarios and tasks, and recruit for and do the pilot study. Additionally, I also recruited participants for the actual usability testing and moderated the sessions, interviewing participants at the end. I also contributed to writing the report, working on all sections.

Read full report here.