Usability testing can often be an after-thought of website design, but to give it as much thought as possible can only serve to improve websites. In a brief usability test, I and several others acted as potential users to test the intended purposes and functions of EMU’s English Department website. The usability testing was broken up into three scenarios with tasks given for each. Across the three usability scenarios, the English Department website seemed to average a passing grade percentage-wise based on the results of the survey. However, when it comes to helping prospective students get a feel for the programs available and be encouraged to join, as well as being a useful springboard tool for current students to find what they need, a mere passing grade is not what the department website should be satisfied with.

In my initial impression of the website, I noticed that the blurb on the department home page failed to be substantially useful in telling about what the department is about and what it can offer to students who choose a program within the department. It seemed to me that the home page blurb was a weak inverted pyramid. Janice Redish, in her book Letting Go of the Words: Writing Content That Works, discussed the key message and the inverted pyramid style on page 136, and talked about the importance of the main point coming first, the immediate section after it being the supporting information that is relevant to readers, and the remaining bit being the history and background, if needed. While the department website blurb does begin with a main point, the section after it seemed to state the obvious more than anything. “Here you will find information about the exciting things that are happening in our department…” Sentences like this make the blurb weak in that they are putting an onus on the reader to dig further to figure out what the department is about and what is going on with it. In that regard, it partly violates Krug’s “don’t make me think” mantra, as well as Redish’s assertion that we should be thinking of people who engage with our websites as “users” rather than “readers.” In the survey results, a few other people seemed to echo some of my thoughts in their initial impressions of the home page in that some referred to it as “bland,” and something that didn’t necessarily push them away, but also didn’t invite them in or encourage them to explore. Several also noted that the events advertised on the home page were not up to date. Redish notes that content strategy “keeps the website from being cluttered with outdated and inaccurate information” (Redish, 37). Despite all this, the home page wasn’t without strong points. A few people noted on the survey that the home page was compact enough to not require the user to scroll, and that the organization was neatly done.

The first scenario of the usability test had us put ourselves in the shoes of the would-be undergraduate English major who needed to know more about what it would mean to major in writing or English education. It was relatively easy to navigate from the department home page to the programs the department offered, as the left-side menu had a clearly labeled link to the program page. Once I was on the program pages for each major, the links to the course curriculum weren’t presented on the page in a consistent way, and made me search for them each time. Redish asserts that people are “faster at understanding how the page is designed and at finding the specific part we need if the patterns are obvious and consistent across pages” (Redish, 54). I was ultimately able to find the course requirements for both majors, but the blurb for each didn’t really emphasize the why I should choose one over the other. A few other testers had a similar experience, but most seemed to rate the navigational aspect of this task as easy to very easy. Overall, it seemed that getting to the pertinent page for each program was relatively easy, but that the pages themselves didn’t seem to justify enough why a prospective student should choose a particular major.

The second scenario of the usability test had us put ourselves in the shoes of the would-be EMU student who needed to know if they needed to take an English or Literature class for their general education credit based on their high score in AP English. While attempting to use the English department’s website to complete this task, I discovered that there really didn’t seem to be a page on the site that connected a prospective student to that type of information. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to navigate to the information I needed without using the search bar. One of the things Redish touches on when discussing how to improve the internal search for a website is that “writing clearly with the words that your site visitors use is the key to internal search success” (Redish, 8). Perhaps if there had been a term similar to general education used on the site, it would have been possible for testers to navigate to their answer without using the search bar. The survey results of the other testers mostly reflected my own experience, as the vast majority rated this task as being very difficult to difficult.

The third scenario of the usability test had us put ourselves in the shoes of a would-be graduate student who not only wanted information on their chosen field of study, but also what financial aid resources would be available to them if they pursued that graduate degree at EMU. The navigational tools in place enabled me to find the page for the Written Communication MA program within a few short clicks. Additionally, the blurb on the Written Communication program page gave useful information on what kind of careers a person with this degree can pursue. The potential job positions and salary possibilities were set in boldface, which drew my eye to them and helped convince me that this degree would line up with the future career I wanted. In this regard, the page satisfied Redish’s idea of a successful conversation in that I was able to “grab and go” (Redish, 5). If anything, the blurb borderlined on being too wordy, as the text filled up the page to a certain extent. As far as the available options for financial aid, I was able to navigate to the graduate assistantships page easily enough, but there were a few bits of information that seemed to be missing. There was no link or explanation for the personal statement requirement, and the the Journal of Narrative Theory Editorial Assistant and National Writing Project Assistant assistantships didn’t have descriptions of what they would involve. Additionally, when I used the link that was given to look at the other graduate assistantships that were available at the university, I had to jump through several different pages in order to collect all the information I needed for how and where to apply to open positions. The majority of the other testers surveyed rated this task as falling in the middle in terms of difficulty.

Concisely, usability testing can reveal a lot about how users experience a website, and whether the website is setup in such a way that users are able to get the most intended use out of it.