Home+Page+Design

Phase 3: Home Page Design
The results of the future workshop indicated that our users were keen to participate, and also that they had many creative ideas that were representative of the ICCIT department. In this phase of design we aimed to draw from this and allowed our users to participate more directly in the layout and design of a challenging and central aspect of any website— the homepage.

The design of the website’s homepage contained two main challenges. The first was the type of information that should be displayed on the entry screen, and how it should be laid out. This was important because we wanted the frequently used information and functions to be displayed effectively to increase the usability of the website for the users. The second challenge was the menus which were to be displayed across the top of the homepage also known as the global navigation. Since, the future workshop did not provide us with any practical organizational structure of ideas; this aspect of the website design was still undecided.

We planned to select two different design techniques to tackle each challenge. The first was a low-fidelity prototype that allowed for much participation and flexibility form the users. The second was a card sorting exercise to develop a global navigational structure to model the home page menus and organization of information. Since both activities dealt with the design of the website’s homepage, we decided to perform them together so that participants could relate their involvement between the two. We also needed to obtain this information as quickly as possible since both activities results would be used within the design of the prototypes, which we wanted to complete in the next phase of design.

Low-Fidelity Prototypes
The low-fidelity prototypes are a tool to constructively assemble a layout or structure for an aspect of the overall design. In this case, this design activity was selected so that users could actively participate in creating the homepage of the new website. Objective As discovered from the initial interview and future workshop, our participants were visual thinkers rather than conceptual. In order to accommodate them to visualize their ideas, a hands-on exercise was facilitated. Exercises can be developed to express cognitive, emotional, apparitional, and procedural issues (Gage and Kolari, 2002). The objective was to gain a better understanding of the participants’ visions of the new website without the limitations of words. This was facilitated by using elementary school supplies such as post-it notes, wooden blocks, labels and lots of paper for sketching. The act of laying out the words and images and the choice of placement on the paper or poster board enabled participants to map out much more than could be kept in their conscious memory during a conversation (Gage and Kolari, 2002). The participants were asked to create a prototype for the homepage based on their vision, frustrations and other personal experiences and we hoped to foster innovation in an unstructured and creative, yet feasible way.

Design Session
Date: Friday February 18, 2011 Participants: • 5 fourth year students (2 on CCIT marketing team) • 2 faculty • 1 alumni • 1 third year student • 1 administrator Total: 10 participants Materials: • Post-It Notes • Plain Paper • Grid paper with a picture of a browser • Pencils • Blocks of various sizes • Labels The design session was interactive, and each participant was able to work independently to create a homepage design that adequately met his/her needs. Participants had the freedom to use the materials that they felt most comfortable with to use within their prototype creation. As facilitators, we did not interfere with the design session, and only observed and instead addressed when they were asked directly. Pictures of this design session can be seen in Appendix C of this document.

Results
The results from these low-fidelity prototypes generated many feasible and tangible ideas. The participants also prioritized website tasks and included links to perform the highest priority tasks on the homepage. Each prototype had its unique attributes but an element that was continually repeated was the emphasis on the students' work and alumni profiles. The overall results that the prototypes provided us with were basic ideas on users' expectation for the homepage and an emphasis on the importance of incorporating the talent of the ICCIT members.

Assessment
This session was very helpful in our design progress since it translated the participants' ideas into a concrete form. It also gave the participants more of a voice since everybody had an equal chance to actively participate in creating their individual prototype. Despite our success with this session, we felt that we may have understood the participants' expectations better if we further limited the scope of this task. This could have been done through the incorporation of scenarios, such as by asking them to create prototypes based off of specific tasks or by asking them to write a scenario based on the anticipated activities they would perform on this site. Taking advantage of activity-based scenarios would have maintained an activity and operational focus, and produced more realistic prototypes.

Card Sorting
This card sorting exercise was a tool to develop an organizational structure for the many pieces of content and functionality that have been previously identified. This information could be further utilized within the design process when dealing with navigational and structural questions.

Objective
The results from the future workshop provided a large list of content and features to include in the new design for this website. What it didn’t provide was any insight into how they should be organized. One of the major critiques of the current website is its menu structure which primarily organizes all content by three user types: applicants, students and faculty. Since this was such a prominent problem with the current design, we wanted to be sure to improve upon this structure.

The card sorting exercise was an opportunity for participants to group related ideas. Content and functionality that related were likely to be looked for under the same menu item on a website. The results of this exercise provided a usable and intuitive structure for the menu options displayed on the home page. The ideas presented in the future workshop were described as they were placed on the wall; however sometimes there were disagreements of how they should be implemented into the website. A particular idea meant different things to different participants. As well, our interpretations of these ideas could have been misunderstood during the confusion and abundance of information described during the workshop.

This card sorting exercise was an opportunity for participants to provide further information on their interpretations of the ideas that they had previously identified. Through the observation and analysis of grouped content and functionality a better understanding of the types of features that were desired by the users were obtained. As with many organizations, the ICCIT department uses terms that we were not always aware of. This presented some confusion when discussing the operations of the department, and the content and features of the website. It was important that we upheld these conventions within the naming and labelling of the website. Similarly, it was crucial that we were aware of the elements that users that were unfamiliar with such as prospective students searching for admissions information. The card sorting exercise was an opportunity to gain feedback on the labels for content and functionality that we presented them with, as well as the names for the groups we have created. We aimed to ensure that we applied the words that were understood and representative of the department.

Design Session
Date: Friday February 18, 2011 Participants: • 3 fourth year student • 1 third year student • 1 faculty • 1 administrator Total: 6 participants Materials: • Recipe Cards (Cue Cards) o 10 cards: Possible group names written in red o 48 cards: Features/content items written in black • Post-It Notes • Markers • Pens & Pencils This card sorting session was conducted with six participants working either individually or in teams of two. They were given a set of 48 recipe cards each with the name of a feature or piece of content which will be contained in the new design for the website. There were also 10 cards representing possible group titles that the cards could be organized within. The list of cards and their content is listed in Appendix G. They were asked to distribute the 48 cards within the predefined set of groups. The participant was told that they had the freedom to remove cards they thought were irrelevant, add missing cards or rename any of the cards and group titles. We observed the participants while they completed the activity and took notes of any feedback they provided throughout the exercise.

Results
The result of this card sorting exercise was four sets of possible organizational schemes based on related content. Much of the grouping results overlapped between the four different sets which was helpful to create a base set of menus in the navigational structure. However, each individual set also introduced new creative ideas and unique interpretations of content. Many participants were proactive and made suggestions that were not expected, introducing new group titles and removing redundant information or unpractical/unhelpful features. All of the results can be found within Appendix H of this document. There were four particular elements which every set of data grouped differently. These were the “calendar”, “internships”, “work at ICCIT” and the “image gallery”. Other than these four elements we were able to gather information on how to group and classify the other piece of content and functionality. The four unknown elements were grouped where we thought they best fit, given the final decided structure of the menus.

Assessment
Upon further reflection of the results of the card sorting, and guidance from the professor, we realised that the decided grouping structure focused only on related elements. Participants were asked to distribute the cards into groupings that made sense to them, without any regard for the functionality of the website. An organizational structure designed in this way may not have been the best design decision. The usability of a menu structure was also dependent on content and functionality that supports related tasks to be strategically placed. The menu items created with the card sorting results was more content-oriented than activity-oriented, which may limit the usefulness when implemented in the design. To avoid this problem we should have structured our card sorting session with scenarios to gain insights not only into which elements were related, but what elements would be used to perform a common website operation. This information could have allowed us to form menu items that were more intuitive and helpful for the users. To account for this in our design we were sure to test the navigational structure adopted in the prototype design with scenarios in the next phase.