*This email is about usability testing. If you aren't interested in
this topic, you can skip this message.

On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 4:31 PM Jim Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> It's been a while since I talked about the website redesign. It's been
> a slow process, but I finally have an iteration live on the test site:
> https://test.freedos.org/
>
[..]


I've been working on the website redesign as a "slow burn" project for
the last several months. What drove me to get this iteration finished
is that I'm working on a usability test of the updated design.

"Usability" means that real people can do real things in a reasonable
amount of time. A website has good usability if real people can use
the website to learn about FreeDOS in a reasonable amount of time (a
few clicks to find the right content).

I teach usability at the graduate level at the University of
Minnesota, and my work there has connected me to other faculty who
also teach usability. A colleague at the University of Minnesota, and
another faculty member at Michigan Tech, are working together to teach
an undergraduate course in usability. Students work in groups to
design, build, execute, and analyze a usability report of a *real*
client website. I volunteered the new FreeDOS website for their
usability test. They also have two other clients, and student groups
can choose the website to work on. At least two groups have asked to
work on the FreeDOS website.

So what does this mean? I've essentially "locked in" changes on the
test website while the students do their usability tests. Since this
is a semester-long class on usability, I won't have results until the
end of the semester. The semester runs until May, so that's when I'll
get their results back.

This seemed like an excellent opportunity to get free usability
testing on the new website. I'm really glad to work with them on the
usability test.

In May, I'll have their usability test results. I'll ask for
permission to share their verbatim usability test reports with you -
if not, I'll be able to share a summary of their findings.


Jim


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