Usability Test on Outside Audience

To gather subjects for the Usability Testing, we wanted to find college students who use Pandora and similar streaming websites, because they are more likely to use a website like ours, and students who prefer/know DJs.

First, we interviewed a senior named Melissa who often uses Pandora. When asked the purpose of the business and what the site can do, she guessed that it was for streaming live music and listing DJ's and bars in the Columbus area. She easily guessed the main sections of the site and said she that when coming to the website, the first place she'd go would be to remain on the Streaming Now page and start listening to music. When asked to find the specific areas of the website, she found them all quickly and on her first try. She think the site portrayed the purpose and content of the site in an easy-to-navigate, clear way. However, when we told her the purpose of the site was to "stream local music and promote bars away from campus," she did not think the prototype really promoted bars away from campus. If she did not think it promoted bars away from campus, then we will use bars away from campus as the "featured bar" whenever possible, because it will be given more attention by the users. If the next subject answered that she knew where to find music that was playing now "because it was the home page that I had already been to," then we will revise the script to ask that about where to find subscriptions because it is less obvious (and we did change it).

Secondly, we interviewed Lexi who prefers bars with DJ's. Lexi had many similar answers to Melissa in the way that she found everything quickly and easily. She said that if she were to come to our home page, she would first go look at the list of bars, because she would want to see the information provided about the ones she may be attending that night (to see their specials). She did not think the overall design matched the live streaming aspect as well as it could because "most sites would make it available on each page" like Pandora. If we wanted to make sure users could stream the music while visiting other pages on the site, then we would add a mini player to the header, because they will then be able to pause it while on any page. After interviewing Lexi, we revised the script to ask why they thought they'd find subscriptions where they did.

Next, we interviewed Alex whose friend is a DJ. He guessed the purpose, main sections, and features of the site pretty accurately. Because his friend is a DJ, he said upon entering the site he would first go to the DJ's tab and look for his friend's profile. He navigated the site easily and found everything we asked of him on his first try. After he found the My Profile button to review his subscriptions, I asked why he expected to find it their and he said "because that's where other websites would put it." This is good because it shows we are remaining consistent with web standards. He thought the overall design matched the purpose and content well, but thought we were promoting DJ's more than the other intentions for the site that we listed.

Lastly, we interviewed Chad, a junior who recently turned 21 and started going to bars. Chad answered the first few questions spot on what we were looking for and began navigating it well. He ran into a similar problem one of our in class subjects had when asked to find subscriptions he has. He did not think to look in the header, but he did look to the footer. If he also had a hard time finding this, then we should make the button bigger or introduce that feature once they register because they will then know where it is or be able to recognize it. Other than that, he thought it all matched our purpose and intentions and was interested in the site.

Therefore, after going through these interviews, we found a few changes we may want to consider making:

• Promoting bars away from campus: making them the Featured Bar as often as possible and rearranging the list on the Bars page to put campus bars at the bottom.
• Live streaming: making it more accessible from any page and making it more prominent.
• My Profile features: making them more apparent or introducing them when they first enter the site so it is easier for users to find and change preferences.

If our in class usability tests yield similar answers, these may be taken into account for our final overall design, because they would then have become consistent problems.