* Communication

Trung:

email: tuantrung.tran@gmail.com

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Segmentation:

• - students:
  • exchange students -degree students
  • international students - Finnish students
  • Media Engineering, Art Design, Nurse, IT, Social Services, Building...
  • different campuses: Leppävaara, Myyrmäki, Tikkurila, Bulevardi...

• - teachers

• - staff

We will concentrate on the students.

Activities:

• browsing the news from the subjects, lectures
• upload homeworks
• start workspace
• enter workspaces
• communicate
• download course material
• read feedback
• checking the calendar
• place announcement
• course related activities in the course view

Focal roles for the new Tuubi website

International student, Media Engineering or IT students, Leppävaara campus

which year? certain levels, computer skills?

- Media Engineering students

1. # of users that occupy this user type: 138

2. General responsibilities or activities: keep track of their activities, return assignment
3. Computer skills: proficient
4. Domain expertise: media engineering, design, mainly graphics oriented skills, less programming
5. Goals: make the communication easier between the teachers and students: submission of assignment, downloading teaching materials
6. Pain Points: ease the submission of tasks, homeworks; reaching teaching materials
7. Usage Contexts: in school, at home

8. Software Ecosystem:

• browser: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari
• might use Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint
• programs that can create PDF
• merja: and the students are not usign eny other tools (e.g., software when using Tuubi)? If you subbit a taks and have done in word you are not using word? Or any autohoting tools if you are designing something? I do not believe that when you use tuubi you only use browser I have seen other application open at the smae time.

9. Collaborators: teachers and maybe fellow students
10.Frequency of Use: daily (30%), every 2-5 days (70%)

- IT students

1. # of users that occupy this user type: 244

2. General responsibilities or activities
3. Computer skills: proficient
4. Domain expertise: mainly programming oriented skills, less to none graphic skills
5. Goals: make the communication easier between the teachers and students: submission of assignment, downloading teaching materials
6. Pain Points: ease the submission of tasks, homeworks; reaching teaching materials
7. Usage Contexts: in school, at home
8. Software Ecosystem:

• browser: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari
• might use Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint
• programs that can create PDF
• merja: and the students are not usign eny other tools (e.g., software when using Tuubi)? If you subbit a taks and have done in word you are not using word? Or any autohoting tools if you are designing something? I do not believe that when you use tuubi you only use browser I have seen other application open at the smae time.

9. Collaborators: teachers and maybe fellow students
10.Frequency of Use: daily (30%), every 2-5 days (70%)

Simple Persona:

Name: Jason Johnson

A role or job title: Students of Media Engineering

Quotes in the persona's language: "Where is that in Tuubi?"

Relevant demographics: Living in Kilo. 21 years old. Male. Works part time in a warehouse, usually in the weekends.

Descriptions that reveals goals, motivations, pain points: Wants to submit his assignment fast and if it's necessary than even from different places and from different computers. The same way, also want to check new tasks, new information concerning different courses.

Descriptions that describe primary activities this user type will engage in, where and in which social relations: He spends quite much time on lessons but not very engaged. He has hobbies which he is much more enthusiastic about. He spends a lot of time with his friends and like to ask help of his fellow students for school tasks.

Feature opportunities and design imperatives

Jason would appreciate fast response. Some of the expressions on the Tuubi portal might be incomprehensible for him. He would also prefer some more sophisticated design features but it is not very important.

1. Jason wants that when he is reminded by Tuubi that there is some changes in the workspace, then what has changed, that he should not go through all the tabs that belongs to one workspace to find it.

The tasks that have to be performed could be executed in simpler way (less clicking around). The most performed tasks should be more easily accessible: this might not be possible in the current layout -> maybe this could be tested.

Finding out which are the functions that are not used, or could be eliminated or merged with other functionality tabs: eg. Frontpage+Announcement, Assignment+Calendar.

Merja: So what are the usability criteria? Good looks? Effienciency? Compability? ...? What - You need to define these for the Task 2.

Task2:

Planning Report

• The goal of the test: what do you want to achieve?

--> There are 2 main goals:

1) Understand Course view of Tuubi of user experience in Metropolia Leppavaara unit.

2) Assemble a list of realistic and feasible improvements for Tuubi:

• Users should be able to perform the most used tasks with the least possible clicks and milage of mouse movements.
• Create a layout which is more comprehesible. The user should not spend too much time browsing through the functions.
• This is main goal towards which you drive with the test but it is not the usability need of the users who use Tuubi, to whom you imprve the Tuubi. See my comment above in task 1.

• Where and when will the test take place? MB: if you start the actual test in week 4 do you have enough time for the pilot test, improvements of the plan?

--> In our school. The test will take place after the contact lessons with previously chosen persons who will perform the test.

• How long is each test session expected to take?

--> appr. 45 minutes

• What computer support will be needed for the test?

--> PC

• What software needs to be ready for the test?

--> browser: IE, Firefox, Safari

• What should the state of the system be at the start of the test?

--> The computer should be up and running. Network connection should be available and ready. The computer has to have at least a browser installed. From the server side, the Tuubi server should be up and running, and be available on the internet.

• What should the system/network load and What should the system/network load and response times be? (not too fast or too slow);

--> Because we plan to perform the test in our school, the network does not play very big role in our test. The Tuubi site, as it is, does not cause very much data traffic, so we can assume that in most palces there is enough bandwith to run the system.

• Who will serve as experimenters for the test?

--> The experimenters will be one of us: either Ivan or Trung. Our subjects will be the students from the Metropolia Helsinki University of Applied Scinces, from the Media Engineering and the Information Technology departments.

• Who are the users going to be and how are we going to get hold of them?

--> We will ask them in the school. Most of them will be our acquaintances.

• How many users are needed?

--> 10-15 persons. (To be exact, each one in the category of White, Black, Asian, male, female, Media Engineering or IT; 12 people in total)

• What test tasks will the users be asked to perform?

• As we are going to do an "in-depth interview", there is no need for test task. Only user experience is needed.

• What criteria will be used to determine when the users have finished each of the test tasks correctly?

• The user found the new content in the workspace.
• The user uploaded his/her assignment.

• What user aids will be made available to the test users (manuals, online help, etc)?

--> There are not really usable manuals or helps. So the subjects should perform the tasks without them. We also would like to measure how easy to execute certain tasks.

• To what extend will the experimenter be allowed to help the users during the test?

--> The experimenter will assist to the subjects, s/he will change the mock-ups according to the inputs and may ask questions to help. But the experimenter is not allowed to solve issues instead of the subjects. S/he cannot tell where the subject should click or what something means, only if the explanation of the mock-up was not clear.

• What data is going to be collected and how will it be analysed?

--> The time will be measured, the clicks, the number of changes of the screen -> the main aim is to lower these numbers. We will have also open questions to make our approach more qualitative.

Questionnaire

1. Do you find hard to find a certain course within your workspace? If yes, why?
2. In the left sidebar you can find the courses that you applied for. How distracting you find that the course code appears before the course name?

1. Could it be after the course name, or you should find it on the opened workspace, or might be omitted completely?

When you see the icon for new content, how do you go about to find the new content? Give an example of a tool that has a good notification system.

What do you think about the "Calendar" tab?

Give an example of a good calender application? Why is it good?

Do you use the "Groups and users" tab?

    What information can you get out from it?

    Can you find some similar data on other tabs?

How often do you use the "Discussion" tab?

What do you use the "Discussion" tab for?

What do you think about the number of tabs in the workspaces?

    Are there too many?

    Do you think some of them could be merged together? Which ones?

Under the "Assignments" tab you can return your assignments. Do you find easy to return your assignment? Why? Why not?

    When you click onto a task in the assignment list, how can you find what do you have to return?

    When you open assignment you see the description of the task, the information and the attachment tabs. Do you think the "Attachment" and "Information" tabs could be merged?

    Suggest a name instead of "Information".