Rachel Yang here. I have been on staff at ACS for about the past five years, and with chemistry.org/Web Presence for about a year. I was recently assigned to complete a usability project that will give us information about how people use the Web, and more importantly, how they use ACS sites.
Nathaniel from e.magination and I have been alternating weeks between Leesburg, VA and Baltimore to test participants. We chose to use the two locations to get as broad a sampling as possible of chemists and other constituents who are likely regulars of ACS sites. The demographics are based on personas that were made in the information architecture team and include chemists, biochemists, professors, students, government employees, and journalists, both members and non-members.
We are in the middle of week four and have done more than 40 tests so far. Each test is about an hour long and includes a pre-interview, the tasks themselves, a survey, and a post-interview. Each participant is given 4 tasks to complete for one of our sites--chemistry.org, ACS Publications, and C&EN. They have a maximum of 15 minutes to do each task, but most don't take that long.
Want to try? Here's a sample task:
Go to the chemistry.org homepage.
Imagine you are interested in learning more about gas chromatography.
First, use the site to check if there are any upcoming classes in gas chromatography.
Second, find the page with the online form to enroll in the class.
How long did it take you?
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