Subject: UWired Usability Committee Meeting Minutes - 4/28/00



                 UWired Usability Committee Meeting
                         April 28, 2000
           Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology

Attending: Tom Lewis, Stacy Waters, Carol Robinson, Kathryn Sharpe, 
Helene Williams, Rick Ells

New meeting time
  In the future, meetings will be held on the last Monday 
  of each month, 9am-10am.
   o May meeting
      When:  May 22, 9-10am  
      Where: CARTAH, basement of Thompson  Hall, 35F
      Topic: Recruiting volunteers for usability tests 
   o June Meeting
      When:  June 26 
      Where: C&C TCG, Mary Gates Hall
      Topic: Evaluating the Catalyst site

Tom Lewis reports that UWired is working on updating and redesigning
its sites
  o Usability studies are planned for the Catalyst site
    - Mark Alway & Trevor Leffler will be doing redesign
  o Have people coming in and trying tools in CTLT
  *** Usability committee will review design ideas in a meeting with
      designers, sometime in the future

Usability Site
  o Generally agreed that committee will maintain the relatively
    stable long-time-line stuff, including the resource lists and 
    checklists. UWired will look into incorporating the more 
    active stuff, such as "Campus Dialogs" and "Technology Toolkit",
    in UWired site.

Usability testing and user-centered design at the UW
  o Not that many people doing usability yet at the UW
  o Need to know how it is done in UW environment
  o Methods
    - Focus groups - neat ideas on what is possible, but may not 
      consider what is doable
    - Usability Tests require setup, are labor intensive
    - Heuristics provide quick feedback, Judy Ramey is working on 
      better heuristics
  
Recruitment
  o Everyone needs people for tests
    - UWired, needs tests
    - Libraries, is finding faculty testers, but not grad students
    - TCG, plans to put call for volunteers on labs home page
    - Microsoft wants to run ad in Daily
  o We need to talk about recruitment issues 
    - issues
       - privacy
       - human subjects, approval from Human Subjects 
       - diverting from educational, professional work
       - testing product not person
    - push
       - on labs home page
    - pull 
       - gifts
       - free lunch
       - where to put call for volunteers so that people will find it 
    - tools
       - WebQ
    *** Objective for committee is to create a writeup/webpage on
        recruitment by end of June
    *** Tom Lewis will contact Human Subjects person to come to meeting

Developer's Gathering
  o Looking at summer for a time to hold a developers' event
  o Everyone is encouraged to go to the upcoming PETTT event:
     "Towards Integrating the Sciences and Technologies of Learning 
     for Education" workshop. Friday May 26
     in the HUB Auditorium, 8:30am-5:00pm. No advance registration
     necessary. 
  o UWired has marketing system, including news pages and mailing lists
    that could provide a start in finding developers

We need to identify sources of objective information about UW 
user populations and technologies in use - Going beyond squeeky 
wheels and assumptions
  o Tech Fee student technology survey
    ( http://depts.washington.edu/techfee/docs/results/ )
  o Library exit surveys ( http://www.lib.washington.edu/surveys/ )
  *** Gather links to known quality UW studies relevant to site design
      issues

Carol talked about testing of help@cac page 
  ( http://www.washington.edu/computing/help )
  o worked in LUTE lab
  o tested 5 people
  o structured questions
  o hour and half test for each person
  o did tasks and answered questions
  o all qualitative, no quantitative
  o writeups of the test design are available. Ask Carol (cr@u.washington.edu)
    for copies

To do's
  *** Tom Lewis 
    - How we are going to interact with UWired redesign process
    - Find Human Subjects person
  *** Rick
    - Work on recruitment agenda, contact Human Subjects person about
      the role he/she wants to play
    - Add links to quality studies to Usability site
  *** Everyone
    - Go to PETTT event

 |- Rick Ells - 543-2875 - rells@cac.washington.edu - Rm 301 4545 Bldg -|
 |-                http://staff.washington.edu/rells/                  -|