Project Report

The Project Report can be viewed here.

Final Stage

Cooperative Evaluation of the prototype has been carried out with the help of five participants. The last stage of the project will involve analysis of the results of the final evaluation, conclusions and lessons learned. A report documenting each stage of the project will be written and delivered on December 1st 2010.

Cooperative Evaluation Task List

The task list our subjects will use to test the prototype:

Please carry out the following tasks

Task List

 

1. Find a full time job advertised yesterday in Cork in the Arts/Media/Design sector

 

2.

a) Find a part time job advertised today in Galway in the Hotel and Catering sector

b) Change the location to Limerick

 

3.

a) Find a full time work placement program position for graduates advertised last week in Waterford in the Software/IT sector

b) Print the work placement program information

 

4.

a) Select the part time option from the Full Time / Part Time Jobs menu

b) Undo your last step and change your selection to full time

Preliminary Prototype

A short video of the preliminary prototype:

Following some final tweaking the next step is to carry out cooperative evaluation of the prototype.

Re-Design Requirements

Using the usability issues identifies from the heuristic evaluation of the system we have drawn up the following re-design requirements:

1. Instructions are to be included on each page specific to the page’s content.

2. An interactive map is to be developed in order to ease the selection of location. The user will first be given the option of selecting a province and then a county.

3. A master control bar is to be included which allows the user to undo or redo an action at any stage without losing selections made up to that point.

4. In the event of the kiosk running out of paper and the user selecting the print option, an error message will be displayed advising the user on what action should be taken.

5. The “Jobs” page is to be re-designed in order to deal will with the confusion over the “Job Type” and “Occupation” issue and also to eliminate the unnecessary  duplication of the Work Placement Program options. “Jobs” on the home page is to be renamed “Employment”. “Occupation” is to be renamed “Job Sector”. The re-design is as follows:

HOME PAGE: “Employment”, “Allowances”, “Courses”

EMPLOYMENT PAGE: “Jobs”, “Employment Program”, “Work Placement Prog. 1 (Grads)”, “Work Placement Prog. 2”, “Apprentice”

JOBS PAGE: “Full Time / Part Time”, “Job Date”, “Job Location”, “Job Sectors”

The next stage of the project is to take the re-deign requirements and produce a working prototype.

Heuristic Evaluation

We have carried out individual heuristic evaluations of the system and have compiled our results to form a list of problems that need to be rectified. To carry out the heuristic evaluation we followed Jakob Nielsen’s Ten Usability Heuristics.

The results of our evaluation:

1. General instruction and help within the system is poor.

2. The location selection page is unnecessarily complicated and is also confusing for people with limited knowledge of the geography of Ireland and/or foreigners. Currently when “Job Locations” is selected the user is presented with a two-page list with options such as: Page 1> [Dublin North, Dublin South, Dublin, Midlands, Mid-West, North-East, North-West, South-East, South-West, West], Page 2> [All Ireland, Overseas, Northern Ireland]. Some of these options themselves are broken down into further divisions when selected.

3. Currently there is no Undo/Redo function in the system. If the user has made a series  of selections and decides that they want to change just one of these selections the only option is to go back to the start and begin all over again.

4. Lack of error messages. During our evaluation of the system we tried printing some information about a job. Nothing happened because the paper had run out but no error message appeared informing the user of the system state.

5. We found some naming of the selections to be confusing. For example, there is an option called “Job Type” and another called “Occupations”. Selecting “Occupations” leads the user to a page with a list of employment sectors (Agriculture and Fishing, Arts/Design/Media, Building and Construction, etc). The word occupation refers to the actual job a person does, i.e dentist, teacher, artist, rather than the employment sector they work in. “Job Type” seems to be a more appropriate name for this selection list.

6. There is some unnecessary duplication of selections. Example: the “Work Placement Prog. 1 (Grads” and “Work Placement Prog. 2” options are presented to the user when “Jobs” is selected from the home page but they are also presented in the sub-menu “Job Type”.

The next stage of the project requires us to consider our findings from the heuristic evaluation and to propose solutions to each of the problems identified.

A Brief Description of the Artifact

 

FAS Employment Service Office, Upper Mallow Street, Limerick

 

The FAS touch screen kiosk is used by job/course seekers in FAS Employment Service Offices. Based on selections made by the user, a list of available positions in the FAS database is generated. The user then chooses a positions and can view the relevant information. The user also has the option to print the job/course information using a built-in printer.

 

FAS Job Search Kiosk, including touch screen and built-in printer

 

Opening screen:

 

Screen 1. Options: Jobs, Allowances Menu, Courses Menu

 

 

Screen 2. Once "Jobs" has been selected the user begins to refine the search. Options: Jobs Full Time / Part Time, Job Type, Job Date, Job Location, Occupations, Work Placement Prog. 1 (Grads), Work Placement Prog 2.

 

The next step in the project is to carry out an expert evaluation using the Heuristic Evaluation method.

Introduction

Hello and welcome. We are three students of the Masters in Interactive Media at the University of Limerick, Ireland. We have set up this blog to document a project that will be going on from October 11th – December 1st 2010. The aim of the project is to choose a technological artifact and to evaluate and re-design it based on our evaluation.

We have chosen the touch screen kiosks located at FAS Employment Services Offices around Ireland. These kiosks are used by employment/course seekers to narrow down their selections when searching available positions in the FAS database.