Working Title: Secondary Marketing
Report Author: Patricia A. Machun
Date: April 17, 2010
Brief Profile of Users
Four people were part of the Alpha test, three employees of the company and one non-employee outside of the mortgage industry.
Employees included a loan officer/originator (LO), loan processor (LP), and someone from Secondary Marketing (SM). The LO and LP would be everyday users of the website, whereas the employee from SM would not as they currently work in a DOS environment. He was included in the test because he would have daily interaction with the LO and LP, and they would use the website to get information to Secondary.
The individual outside of the company and industry has a background in design. He was included to gain insight on how the website would appear to someone new to the company, and possibly, to the mortgage business. Would he understand it easily, or would its navigation be part of training?
Think Aloud Tasks
Summary of Think Aloud
Users where able to find the lock policy, email the Product Coach, and with the exception of the non-employee, find Kat Foster. Once I provided him with a hint that she was the underwriting manager at corporate, he found her under Key Contacts.
The non-industry user had questions about what some of the items were (“What is MI? What is Point?”), the employees did not.
The page had some broken links; all users found them frustrating.
Overall, the design and layout was well received, whereas the font was not.
Summary of Post–Test
Currently, the company’s employee website is very crowed with information and options, the employees like the simplicity of the alpha test’s design. All three thought it was fairly easy to find information compared to what they have now.
All users were able to complete the Think Aloud tasks fairly easily; the issues were more in the how the website behaved and looked. The vertical spry had become a jumble of words and the horizontal spry had background color issues. Some of the links worked, others did not.
The non-employee did not like the color scheme or the logo.
When questioned about the fonts, no one really liked them. One said they were all right, one was completely impartial and the remaining two thought they looked “junky” or “unprofessional, more like something you would find on a family website”.
Two commented that the web site seemed to stop short on the screen and the page was not wide enough.
The non-employee felt that it was easy to use and, if he knew the industry or the players within the company, very straightforward.
Findings to be Implemented
Findings not to be Implemented
Colors and logo. The company colors are blue and yellow and the logo cannot be modified for the website.