Using the System Usability Scale methodology, these tests produced a 91 average score out of 100. This means that the participants found the site VERY usable.

Individual test subject scores are

• 87.5 (Prospective undergrad)
• 85 (Prospective undergrad)
• 95 (Prospective parent)
• 90 (Prospective undergrad)
• 95 (Prospective undergrad)
• 97.5 (Prospective parent)
• 92.5 (Prospective grad)
• 90 (Prospective undergrad)

To learn more about the System Usability Scale, go to http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/system-usability-scale.html.

When asked what grade they would give the site, grades were

• A (Prospective undergrad)
• A (Prospective undergrad)
• B (Prospective parent)
• A (Prospective undergrad)
• A+ (Prospective undergrad)
• B+ (Prospective parent)
• A- (Prospective grad)
• A (Prospective undergrad)

Overall this site has tested very well. A selection of positive responses:

• It seems a lot more professional. I won’t name specifics, I’ve been looking at Universities, a lot of them seems like it would be done by a high school class.
• This looks easier to navigate, other schools, their layout isn’t as straightforward. I like that there is academics , campus, admissions, and who we are, easy access (to those things).
• I really like looking into the type of campus that it is, urban or rural, and how many students are going there, if its’ big or small, connections that each school would have.
• Makes me feel like I’m on a website for Apple or something. The button for more news, it reminds of colors Apple uses. It’s very professional looking, and serious.

We did however uncover lots of details that can make it even better. Template by template, here are some changes that we will make to what we've done so far. For reference, view these pages at http://shutest.sevenheadsdesign.com.

Home Page

• Re consider label "Career Opportunities," it sounds like working at the school, not finding a job
• Make the stats clickable, and link to "who we are" content
• Re consider page labels for internal audiences: make sure they are written for external audiences with a clear link for internal audiences, or possibly change the label adding the word "For." A third option is having clear instructions on the landing page of the internal audience site written for an external audience.

Areas of Study

• Consider sequencing of topics on areas of study - make sure it either supports your strongest programs or admissions priorities (or both)

Health Sciences/Area of Study Landing

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• De-emphasize "our stories" make them lower priority on the page
• Emphasize (make a higher priority on teh page) Degrees to Careers
• De-emphasize or eliminate general News, at the bottom of the page
• Relabel "Our Stories" to "Health Science Stories," do this for any news listing

Academics Landing

• Consider change to label Special Programs, as it is confusing to graduate students. They think all of their programs are highly specialized. Note: did we decide to lose this section?

Admissions Landing

• ​Emphasize program boxes (raise)
• Consider how someone finds "Who We Are" in Admissions, possibly use extra CTA on certain pages as a fall back if they are not ready to apply
• Change the label from "Accepted Students" to "For Accepted Students"

Article Page

• Make links on left relevant to article, article tags that lead to pages

All Pages (Footer, Header)

• Logo in Footer Needs to Be a Link to Home Page
• Make "A leading catholic liberal arts school" clickable, to appropriate "who we are" content

News Landing Pages

• News landing should feature all stories, and not hide stories you may have seen on a previous page, because of More News
• News page should combine featured news from all specific news pages

In addition to these recommended changes, there a few other issues that popped up in testing. We may or may not recommend action on these issues, but we think they are worth raising for future consideration.

1. Make sure it isn't too women focused - only a few people were very literal about the images on the home page, and thought the school was a women's school. We feel like this isn't a problem, but you should aim for diversity in what occupies that home page position.
2. Consider path to Admission/Tuition from Academics - some parents said they would find tuition and financial aid information by going to Academics. We don't know if this is a common assumption. More testing with parents would bear this out, but for now, considerate secondary calls to action to apply (low on the academics pages) should address this.
3. We need to discuss what we can do in the design to prevent assumption that you can scroll no further - because of the white space on certain pages, people might assume there's no more content. We may need to get creative with the design to create a subtle sense that the page continues. This will be difficult, as the location of the fold, for our tests, and for screen sizes we haven't tested, varies significantly.

Attached are our full notes from the testing as well. The interview script we used can be found at https://basecamp.com/1873012/projects/8725987/documents/9276134.

Seton Hill University Usability Test Results and Notes.xlsx (115KB Microsoft Excel file)

Next Steps

We'll be starting a quality assurance to-do list for revisions to existing templates in Basecamp, and we'll add all changes listed here unless you have a particular recommendation you would not like us to follow. If that's the case, please reply to this message with the specific recommendation and why we shouldn't follow it.

We recommend additional testing about a month prior to launch, and then one round of testing per semester after launch on new and key areas of the site. If you can test more often than that, great!