One of the goals for my project is to learn how an app would be helpful to families with younger children in finding information about activities, events, and services offered in the park. I want to know if using an app will be more helpful to families and individuals who visit Hueston Woods. Two important aspects would be speed and ease of use because, in interviews, it was mentioned that many people struggle with being able to quickly find information about the services and activities available at Hueston Woods.
My goal is to have 3-5 participants as the minimum. The targeted demographic for this user testing is parents and parents with younger children who visit Hueston Woods.
-
-
-
The tasks participants will complete will be finding information about events happening in Hueston Woods, finding which services are offered for visitors staying in the lodging and conference area’s hotels, finding family-friendly activities, and finding a hiking trail that is kid-friendly. I will create specific scenarios for each task so participants have a clear understanding of what their goal is to complete the tasks successfully. For the first task, participants will look for information about an event for Hueston Woods’ Nature Center. The second task, participants will pretend to be a visitor staying in Hueston Woods’ lodge, and they want to find information about what services are offered for the hotel accommodations. For the third task, participants will need to find activities they can do with their young children. Then the final task will ask participants to find a hiking trail that is suitable for children.
-
-
-
One of the metrics I would like to measure in the user testing is rating the satisfaction the participant has with the ease of use of the app. Another metric would be rating the efficiency of using an app compared to the participants' self-seeking information in the park. The final metric I will be testing will be the speed of the participants completing tasks. I will compare the participants' speed of finding information on Hueston Woods’ website to the participants’ speed of finding information using my app.
The average of all participants' satisfaction with the ease of use for Hueston Woods' website is
4.7/5
The participants thought the app was fairly easy to use.
"
It's a lot less steps to find things. You don't have to go searching, it's kind of all right there for you
"
-Bryanna
All participants though that the app was more efficient than having to self seek information in Hueston Woods. They rated the app's efficiency
4.7/5
Participants commented that the app was a much quicker way to find the information they would need.
From my user testing I discovered that the app was faster to find information, but the navigation icons may not have been very clear for all participants. This made it take a little longer for some participants to find the information they were looking for because it was not as easy to figure out as on other tasks they did using the app. On the website, it took the participants around the same amount of time on average to complete the tasks I had given them, but for the app, the average times are more varied.
