Evaluation of Brian Stuck's Belton Singers Website

Brian Stuck’s Website Evaluation Report

Pilot Website

1. Caleb will be a high school senior this year and is involved in high school choir. He has taken several Computer Science classes and is familiar with coding websites. Caleb used a 2015 MacBook Air, 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 running mac OS Mojave and used a Safari browser with a DSL connection.
2. Aaron is a Chemistry Teacher at the high school level. He has also taught Computer Science and coached Robotics. He is a colleague of mine. Aaron used a Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30 GHz, 8.00 GB RAM and used a Chrome browser with a cable connection.
3. Pam is a high school Math Teach and a parent of a high school student. She is very much aware of the workings of a high school choir program. Pam used a Dell Latitude E7440 running Windows 10pro, Intel Core i5, 2.0 GHz, 8 GB RAM and used a Chrome browser with a fiber optic connection.

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• The evaluators all thought the information on the pages was useful. I did have duplicate information for a fundraiser on two pages, which was noticed by the adult evaluators. One evaluator suggested a separate page entirely for fundraisers.
• The layout was commented on as being clear and easy to read and the color scheme was pleasing. One evaluator wanted more line spacing for the text.
• The links and navigation was commented on as being easy to follow and understand. One evaluator suggested linking back to the school main page and inserting a favicon.
• The evaluators all commented on the speed of the gallery. The gallery loaded slow on the DSL connection and not immediately on the cable modem. With the fiber connection the gallery loaded immediately.
• The evaluators determined that the text was easy to read as presented. One evaluator requested larger, more centered subtitles, so you didn’t have to read the entire page for the information that was being sought.
• The titles and title bar were marked high by two evaluators. One evaluator requested that the title of the page match the navigation bar title exactly.
• The links were determined by all evaluators to work appropriately and lead to the intended target. The content was also determined to be appropriate and of a nature that users would return for further updates. The credibility of the site was also rated highly with a comment of “impressive” and no copyright infringements were noted.
• Grammatical errors were identified by one evaluator and noted in the comment section. The others did not notice any errors worth mentioning.

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I created an online Google survey for evaluators to fill out – Evaluation Form
The data is contained in this Google Spreadsheet.

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The purpose of my website is to provide a central place for students in my top high school choir, Belton Singers, their parents, and other school personnel to go for information on choir performances, the choir trip, uniforms, fundraisers, and pictures and videos of past performances.

I presented three use cases in my design document; a high school choir student, the parent of a high school choir student, and a school administrator. The evaluators I chose all had a connection to each of the use cases. The evaluators all found pertinent information on the website and verified and supported the use cases it was designed to support. The criticism of the site mainly focused on the readability of the text because of line spacing and heading size. There was a repetition of some site information on two pages. That was confusing to some evaluators, which could be remedied with further explanation in the content. Overall, the site was determined to be successful in meeting the intended purpose of its creation.

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• I will change the fundraiser information that is on both pages and provide an explanation for the duplication. This fact confused two evaluators. One evaluators recommended a page entirely dedicated to fundraising. I will not make this change because the fundraising is specifically tied to the choir trip, except for one exception.
• I will experiment with more line spacing, as suggested by an evaluator, so the text is not so dense. I will also make the subtitles more distinct, as recommended, and make the page titles match the navigation bar title exactly, as recommended by an evaluator.
• One evaluator suggested linking back to the school main page and inserting a favicon. I will make this change also. I am not sure what a favicon is, but the evaluator provided a link that I will explore.
• The speed of the gallery was influenced by the internet connection of the evaluators. I will decrease the size of the thumbnail pictures to make it load quicker for the slower internet connections.
• I will make the grammatical errors identified by one evaluator and noted in the comment section.

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The evaluation process was beneficial in that it gave new eyes to a site that I had been working on and planning for quite some time. I chose to use a google form. One of my evaluators did the evaluation without me present. The other two I was present to give verbal explanations of the task. I also had any evaluator who agreed to do it, but was not able to because of time constraints and lack of access to a computer at the time. The google form was helpful in processing the data for me and making sure the evaluators filled out the Likert scale as well as the written comments.

The perspectives of the different individuals evaluating was also useful. Two of my evaluators had coding experience and gave me some input on what I could technically change to improve the site. The other evaluator was strong in usage, grammar, and layout and gave good suggestions in that area. Evaluators do not all see the same problems or notice the same things on a website. All-in-all I found it a useful process to employ in the future when preparing a website. It makes sense to go to your users and get feedback in order for the site to be truly usable, interesting, and functional.

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