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( Mis )Adventures In Usability. Headline. Paul O’Brian Service Manager for Portals & Mobile. Portals at CU-Boulder: A little background. First portal went live in 2004 Connected to student data on mainframe SIS Joined by 2 others: admitted student & prospect

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  1. (Mis)Adventures In Usability Headline Paul O’Brian Service Manager for Portals & Mobile

  2. Portals at CU-Boulder: A little background • First portal went live in 2004 • Connected to student data on mainframe SIS • Joined by 2 others: admitted student & prospect • Kept growing, polishing, improving • By 2009, a mature & well-liked service • And then… • STUDENT SYSTEM REPLACEMENT • CU system bought PeopleSoft Campus Solutions & Enterprise Portal • Boulder campus decided to convert portals • Portal transition occurred as part of SIS replacement • New portals went live in 2010 • Last legacy portal retired in 2012

  3. Portals at CU-Boulder: Overview • MyCUBoulder • Recruitment portal • Aimed at prospects, applicants, admitted students, & confirmed students • Features: • Marketing information • Access to application • MyCUInfo • Main portal • Aimed at continuing students, faculty, staff • Features: • Self-service (both PeopleSoft and otherwise) • Single signon to campus resources • News/announcements • Static information Live Green

  4. Caught up at last, but is it good? • In 2012, we’d finally recreated all the legacy functionality • But we needed to know what was working and what wasn’t • Solution: usability testing!

  5. The Plan: live usability testing • What is live usability testing? • Put a user in front of the portal and ask them to perform a high-level task • Observe where they struggle and why • Have them think out loud as they use the site • Record the session for later analysis • Report on these tests to determine worst problems, easiest problems • Prep work required • Decide what’s in scope • Identify most critical functions • Create scenarios that capture those functions • Determine data needs for those scenarios • And then…

  6. A snag: Need for clean test data • Having students use their own profile complicates the scenarios • So we need test users, but realistic ones • Clone existing users? • We must be sure we’re FERPA-safe • So after cloning, we scrub all personally identifiable info • Analysis to determine what this is

  7. Can we build it? Yes we can! • Test data has been a problem from Day 1 of the portals • We’ll build a tool to generate test data! • Query the database for users that fit a profile • Clone them and scrub their data • But that will take some time…

  8. Plan B: Survey our users • How to use the time while the tool is being built? • Let’s send out a survey! • So we drafted a survey for MyCUInfo, built it in Qualtrics • Figured out incentives, everyone bought in • And then… • A disastrous spring startup • Portal down for first two days of classes • Do we call off the survey? • We modified it • Prepared to send out on March 11 • And then…

  9. Another snag: battling surveys • Our campus IT office was running a concurrent survey • Very high-profile, part of a high-level evaluation effort • Consequently, we were asked to hold off our survey • After closing date of OIT survey, finals arrived • Too late for a spring survey • Meanwhile, test data tool developer struck with major illness

  10. Head, meet desk

  11. Plans C, D, E, F, and G • Screen reader demo • Blind users show us their experience of navigating the portal • MyCUBoulder (recruitment portal) survey • Different audience from IT survey, so no conflict • MyCUBoulder live testing • For certain audiences (i.e. prospects), clean data is not an issue • MyCUInfo survey, a little later • We’ll still send out the MyCUInfo survey in the fall • Removing the spring disaster adjustments • Orientation observation • Observe students using our portal for the first time • Enlist orientation advisers as focus group

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