Usability - Chantress

10th grader
Likes: English
Hates: Math (Geometry)

Uses the computer mostly at home, not much at school

currently doing a research paper on Mississippi

uses Google to get most information, tries to figure out if site is credible, uses the the look to judge the equality of the site. 50states.com is a big one for her.

Home Page
likes the fact that it has H1N1 on it.

Bookmarking
would write down the points to summarize items, would not save it.


Basic information is not available on topics, and users become frustrated by the lack of clarity in the information. There is no "Eureka" moment where they find what they are looking for. The information seems to be displayed in a no logical way. On portal pages, the overview seems to stand out, but otherwise, the information is too general. Looking for more stats and less opinion on it.

World Map
expected to get a list issues, this looks like map quest.
had to click many times to see the pins (delay in rendering)
pins = where aids happens.

thought a page would come up with a paragraph describing what is going on with aids in Australia.

expected browse countries to display the same topic that was specified earlier (aids), but instead was taken to a popup that contains links to the profile and country.

seems to be a confusion profile and portal links from country popup.

Portal Page


Educator resources and research tools:
why are they different colors.

seem to be the same things

no idea what marklist is, thought it was previous searches.

Thinks that change data bases means that you could add content to the site. Clicked it and was tottaly lost when the common menu came up.


confusion between toolbox and Tools


Would use this in addition to google for research papers.

improvments:
the information that I am looking for just comes up, I don't want to have to look all over the place, looking for symtoms brought up articles and opnion pices that we of no interest to her.