UNC Campus Rec Case Study
Presentation slides:
Link to final deliverable:
The UNC Campus Recreational website serves as a central hub for finding information on campus facilities and campus-sponsored events related to fitness, health, and outdoor activities and excursions. Users can sign-up for activities such as gym slot, group fitness, rock climbing, and intramural sports.
Purpose
As students of UNC Chapel Hill, we often see members of the UNC community using these facilities frequently. However, there are many struggles with booking these campus recreational activities. Along with health being a particularly important concern during a pandemic and the facilities being free for students to use, our group decided this system would be an essential choice for our usability testing.
Users and Audience
There are three user groups this interface is created for: UNC Students, UNC Employees, and Family of UNC Members. Our audience we will focus on for our evaluation is UNC Students. They have complete access to the interfaces we will be testing and the tasks listed are relevant to this user group.
Collecting data from our pre-test questionnaire, our results show that the users have been at the university for 3 to 5.5 years. Additionally, age ranges from 21 to 23 years old. Other factors relating to Campus Recreational Activity are shown in a chart:
Roles and Responsibility
With many of the work done throughout the project being interchangeable, I contributed to:
creating moderator scripts and forms, recruiting users, conducting usability tests, analyzing findings, synthesizing findings, writing the report and presenting the final slides.
Goals
The usability evaluation goals are:
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To determine usability problems with finding information on facilities.
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To determine usability problems with signing up for gym time slots and group fitness.
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To determine usability problems with signing up for sponsored activities like intramural sports and expeditions.
Process
We conducted a study to test how 4 volunteer participants would interact with the Town of Carrboro website. Testing occurred on November 15th and November 22nd, 2021.
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Each individual test was administered on a Window's laptop, using Chrome as the browser. Testing lasted approximately 30 minutes and was screen recorded for analyzing and note checking. The format of the usability test were influenced by the research of Jakob Nielsen, Steve Krug, and Professor Rob Capra.
The test consisted of:​
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​consent form
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pre-test questionnaire
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4 assigned tasks
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post-task questionnaire
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post-test questionnaire
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post-test interview
Assigned tasks:
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As an avid fitness enthusiast, you are determined not to let the pandemic hold you back from your fitness goals. Find out if workout reservations are required to work out at the on-campus gyms.​
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You’ve been excelling academically this semester and wanted to ascend not only mentally but also physically. You see a poster about a rock climbing course and would love to learn on Thursday. Find an Intro to Climbing Course on November 17th at 8:00PM.
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All the working out and rock climbing at Rams Head has gotten you stiff. You check your calendar and you’re free Wednesday night. Find a yoga session on Wednesday from 7:00PM to 8:00PM at Rams Head.
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Reading at the Pit all morning, the weather starts to warm up this afternoon. Suddenly, you remember you can take a dip at the UNC pools. Find a swimming pool close to the UNC Pit.
Findings
Our methodology for data collection included the testing materials, Zoom recordings, and notes taken during the session. The evaluation measures our group focused on were:
The Errors (number of times the user back-tracked), Actual Clicks vs. Minimum Clicks Possible, and Time of Completion were represented in the following charts:
The post evaluation form results:
Common Struggles among our users
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Task 1 (Find out if workout reservations are required to use the SRC gyms):
*there were no common struggles, each user was able to complete the task successfully without error*
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Task 2 (Find an Intro to Climbing Course on the upcoming Wednesday at 8:00PM):
The page for Fetzer climbing wall had information about the wall but no way for the user to look at weekly schedules or book courses. This caused some confused if the user didn't initially find the climbing (stay active) link first.
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Task 3 (Find a Yoga Session on Wednesday from 7:00PM to 8:00PM at Rams Head):
This was one of the most confusing tasks, with the greatest number of errors. The correct path was lengthy and halfway through was a calendar interface that presented the user with a lot of information. Once the user found the event they were looking for, often times they would click the icon beside description. This only downloads a calendar reminder onto their computer. The correct way to access this event is to click the word “Description” that is in grey (unlike common blue hyperlinks). ​
Task 4 (Find a Swimming Pool Close to the UNC Pit):
For this task, the correct path was not lengthy and most users were able to complete it within the minimum number of clicks. However, one part that confused the user was a website bug that occurred during our weeks of usability testing. During our drafting period, the Bowman Gray Memorial Pool location pin was on the map. However, during testing the users were not able to find the location pin, even when zooming into the interface. This lead some users to initially question whether they’ve completed the task or not. Additionally, one user clicked the Bowman Gray Memorial Pool page, only to find information about the pool but no visual or map of where the pool would be.
Based on our findings and analysis, we created 5 recommendations to improve the system:
Results
Overall, the UNC Campus Rec website serves its purpose to provide students with access to its facilities, events, and programs. With the recommendations our group suggested, a member of the faculty acknowledged the potential it has to become an even better resource for the UNC Community!