Website Analysis and Recommendation Project

This assignment is due on week 13.

Working with other members of a team, you will find a non-profit or small organization or company client and conduct usability studies and genre analysis of their website. At the end of the project, you will submit a final recommendation report for improving the site to both your instructor and the client.

Each team will be responsible for conducting necessary research, communicating professionally with the client, and submitting the following deliverables in a timely fashion:

  • Initial Project Post with Project Proposal [Week 5]
  • Oral Presentation on Website Analysis [last three weeks of class]
  • Draft of a Usability Script and Final Version [Week 7]
  • Full draft of your recommendation report. [Week 12]
  • Final Website Analysis Recommendation Report [Week 13]

Each individual is also responsible for submitting a Peer Evaluation Collaboration Form for the project.

Learning Objectives
During this project, you will learn about and gain experience with

  • Providing analysis based on what you have learned about website design in class and through your research into website genre analysis.
  • Testing and analyzing a website for usability.
  • Working with clients.
  • Collaborating and communicating with team members.
  • Writing a proposal, usability test script, and recommendation report. To learn a bit more about usability testing and see Krug walk through an actual usability test, click here and watch the video on the page.

Research and Client Contact
Each team is expected to do extensive research. At the onset, the team should consider potential clients and find a few they'd like to work with before making contact. Obviously, the client should be a not¬for¬profit organization and have an existing website. The site should have more than just a home page and one or two pages of minimal content. And of course, one that you think has obvious problems is one for which you will be able to offer more advice.

The team should also make sure that the client can, within the necessary time frame (consult the course calendar), meet face-to-face for an interview to discuss the purpose of the site. You will need to know the client's goals for their existing site, who they feel is their intended audience, how they think that their audience uses the site, any limitations they feel like their site has, and the resources available they have for making improvements.

Following initial contact with a willing client, the team should

  • Research the client's organization further to learn more about the organization's purpose and audience (who the organization serves).
  • Research the particular genre of that site (find similar sites of similar organizations and do some informal comparative analysis).
  • Set up a face¬to¬face interview with the client to fill in the gaps from the team's research. The team should be well¬prepared before meeting with the client.

NOTE: Do not expect that it will be easy to find and contact a prospective client. Begin looking for a client immediately.

Deliverables
Initial Project Post with Project Proposal
Following initial contact with a willing client, the team will post a story to the course home page describing the client and a formal proposal for their project. The proposal should be one single¬spaced page and cover topics such as

  • The purpose of the website.
  • Audience for the website.
  • Production costs for the project.
  • Plans for completing the project.

The audience for your proposal is your instructor, not your client. However, since we are engaged in learning to write for professional audiences for this class, write this proposal as if your instructor is your supervisor.

The proposal should be submitted as a web page in your own drupal site and copied over as a web page with the appropriate tag on the course website.

Oral Presentation on Website Analysis
After completing the proposal, teams will prepare a 10-12 minute oral presentation supplemented by PowerPoint. Each presentation should contain

  • An overview of the client and their website.
  • Genre comparison research.
  • Design analysis.

Each team member is responsible for researcing, preparing, and participating (in a spoken role) in the presentation.

Usability Script and Testing
Following our readings in Krug's text, each group will draft a usability script for their usability tests. The script will be posted as a regular page to the course home page. On the day that the script is due, each group will do some testing of their usability script with fellow students in class.

After the workshop in class, the team should revise the script before conducting usability testing. The revised version of the script should be of a quality that it can be shared with the client and will be due with the Website Analysis Recommendation Report (include the revised script as an appendices that you can refer to in your report).

Each group is required to conduct usability tests on the website with at least four individuals (you may do more) not in this class.

Website Analysis Recommendation Report

The final document of the project will be a recommendation report based on the group's research and analysis. Recommendations should be based on the team's own design analysis of the website and the results of the usability test.
The primary audience for this recommendation report is your client. The team will submit the report for a grade and provide a copy to the client. This report will be posted as a regular web page to the course home page (copied to your Drupal site) and should follow best practices for report writing. The final version of this report should include the Final Version of the Usability Script (see above).

At minimum, the recommendation report should be organized using the following sections (you may add more and should certainly use subsections):

  • Introduction
  • Background of the site (audience and purpose, client goals, etc.)
  • Initial Analysis (observations of team members)
  • Genre Analysis Comparison
  • Usability Results
  • Recommendations
  • Conclusion

Peer Collaboration Evaluation Document
Each individual will complete and submit to the instructor a Peer Collaboration Evaluation Document. This document is NOT to be shared with fellow group members. It is due the same day as the Website Analysis Recommendation Report.

Do not shrug this assignment off until the last minute. This document is where you demonstrate your involvement in the project through your ability to evaluate your team members. Consequently, the Peer Collaboration Evaluation Document must provide detailed evidence to support your evaluations.

Grading will begin with the following categories:

  • Document appearance
    • Does the document look professional?
    • Is it easy to read?
    • Does it use clear heading and subheadings?
    • Does it contain graphics where necessary?
    • Where using inline CSS to format the document is useful, does it do so?
  • Quality of analysis
    • Does the document point out strengths and weaknesses in the site?
    • Does it appeal to "best practices," especially those suggested by Redish?
    • Does it organize and elaborate where the site has achieved (or failed to achieve) those best practices?
  • Does the report suggest ways to solve problems where weaknesses are found in the site?
    • Where possible, does it show whether the "fix" is easy or difficult?
    • Does it give examples, if appropriate, for a better way to write or present content?
    • Does the report explain why fixes are needed (appealing to Redish or best practices) rather than just offer your opinion?