Canvas Usability Proposal Melanie Oringer, Lindsey Marshall, Erica Feliciano, Neil Ball ENC 3250 April 19th

2013

Table of Contents
PROJECT SUMMARY PROJECT DESCRIPTION A) INTRODUCTION B) RATIONAL AND SIGNIFICANCE C) PLAN OF WORK D) SCOPE E) METHODS F) TASK BREAKDOWN G) PROBLEM/ANALYSIS FACILITIES AND EQUIPMENT PERSONNEL BUDGET CONCLUSION APPENDIXES 3 4 4 4 6 6 7 7 7 8 9 9 9 10

Project Summary
Universities and Colleges have changed a great deal over the years, and many of those changes have to do with the shift from a classroom environment to an online environment. These days, almost every institution offering higher education holds hundreds of classes online. This puts a great deal of pressure on the online tools utilized for these courses. Even when the classes are online, the expectation at the end of the semester is the very same: that the student has fully mastered the subject. Therefore, the online environment has to be above par to keep up with the expectations of its users. Canvas, one of these critically important online class and homework sites, has recently entered the educational market and has been taken on by many colleges and universities. Unfortunately, many errors and problems have come to light since its debut and need to be adjusted in order to keep Canvas ahead of its competitors in this fast paced market. With a plethora of problems that need to be fixed, we found it most important to zero in on the most prominent issues such as its calendar, messaging, recent activity and grades sections. They appear to need a great deal of work in order to make them userfriendly, less confusing and more tailored to students educational needs and wants. Although the updated system has a lot of new and upgraded features, there are still aspects of the program that need to be amended to potentially make it more user friendly and overall better for us students.

As students who attend the University of Central Florida (UCF), we are one of the main users of the learning management system provided by the university to engage in online education. We use the website on a daily basis for online and mixed mode courses. We are all undergraduate students with a few years of college credits under our belts. Additionally, each of us has been subjected to many different forms of online learning

environments and therefore has previous knowledge and experience with things that work for these programs and things that dont. Being Children of the 80s and 90s we had the privilege of growing up with computers most of our lives, and now being completely immersed in a world that thrives off the use of the internet, we are technology forward. With all of this background on the subject coupled with our college level education we are clearly qualified to work on this project. In order to resolve the issues associated with the online program we will set up a focus group with a moderator that we would higher, that is highly knowledgeable in this area of expertise. Along with a focus group we will perform a usability test to address Canvas current issues in hope to make it better.

Project Description
a) Introduction
As students who attend the University we plan to analyze the current online system, Canvas, to improve upon its current design to make it more efficient and user friendly. As the site stands now, it is far less than desirable in the eyes of the students and staff of universities all over the country. We will use an outside company to conduct usability tests, which will reinforce the data behind the already discussed issues, but also hopefully reveal problems that we had not touched on. Additionally, this company will be in charge of holding a focus group in which all participants can express their grievances and concerns with Canvas. Once the data has been collected, it will lead us into a complete redesign of the website, which will revise all of the flaws found throughout the research. After the redesign is complete we will hire the same company that we had previously worked with to conduct more usability tests and focus groups, in order to confirm that the redesign is successful.

b) Rational and Significance

Many students at UCF and college campuses around the country use Canvas for online classes, video streaming, and mixed mode classes. Students use canvas to take tests, quizzes, and numerous other tasks. It is very important that it is easy to navigate for the success of the students in their classes. The site also should provide students with an active update on how their grades are doing in each class. With scholarships, graduations, money and futures on the line, the online class site that is used by a school is incredibly important. Awareness of grades, easy access to quizzes and assignments and a time saving design can mean the difference between going to school and being a college

dropout. The website has to be redesigned in order to keep its customers, the schools, and its users, the students. With a market in which there is always something new coming along, a site like this cannot afford to have as many undesirable traits as it does. According to Neilsons 10 usability heuristics there are a number of flaws with the Canvas website: 1. Visibility of the system status: While Canvas does a good job of giving us updates, it can be overwhelming when we can receive updates from 300 plus students daily. This causes a great deal of confusion when trying to sort through the less important updates to get to the important ones. Therefore, few users will actually find the important updates. 2. Consistency and standards: which we see to be a problem with the current website. The issue we find here is that from one class to the next the setup is completely different. 3. Aesthetic and minimalist design: A lot of options on the website are not listed in order of necessity. On the home page that every student is brought to, it can list many assignments most already having been completed, or the due date passed.

c) Plan of Work
1. The First step in the process will be to find a reliable and trustworthy outside research organization that can plan and facilitate the needed usability tests and focus groups. 2. Then, with the help of this organization, we will find volunteers by contacting UCF and asking them to send out emails to every student on campus through their knights email account making them aware of the study and the need for volunteers. 3. Then we will help the organization set up an environment for the focus group that will make students feel comfortable and therefore able to speak up. 4. Next, the focus group will be conducted by the outside organization and a record will be kept of all responses and discussions that spawn out of it. 5. The outside firm will then use volunteers in a usability test and record anything and everything that the volunteers say out loud while the usability test is in progress. 6. The results of both the focus group and the usability tests will be analyzed by our team to zero in on the issues that need to be fixed. 7. The team will fix said flaws. 8. The outside company will conduct a final round of usability tests and focus groups to make sure that the efforts were beneficial and then everything will be sent to you to await approval.

d) Scope
The research that we will be conducting will only involve a few critical parts on the website. It will include the calendar, messaging, recent activity and grades sections of the sire. We will not be covering any other portion of the web site due to the vastness of its parts. We will also disregard the entire teacher side of this website and really only zero in on the issues with the student side. We will be outsourcing with other companies in order to complete the focus groups and usability tests. We will be relying on them to gather random samples and monitor the programs in their entirety. We will do this so that the data is accurate, generalizable, and can be reproduced. Our responsibilities will be to monitor the time frame that will be established for this project, and to keep all organizations informed of what is going. The organization we are proposing this to, will be to accept our proposal

and work along side us to complete the website redesign. They will also adhere to a budget that will be established by the amount of work that needs to take place.

e) Methods
The first task that will be completing will be a focus group. We will be doing this first because focus groups tell us, what users want from the system (Nielsen Norman Group). This focus group will allow us to hear, in a natural setting, what users think about the website. This will allow us to make necessary changes to the current webpage design. By conducting a focus group we will be able to gather qualitative data, because it is a qualitative research method (Focus Group Methodology). To execute the focus group we will need to determine how many participants we will need, the key attributes of the group, and then set a time and place where this will happen (Conducting Focus Groups). Another one of our tasks will be to complete usability testing on the current website to ensure that our proposed issues are consistent with the test group. By conducting a usability test, our goal is to identify any usability problems, collect quantitative data on the participants performance and determine participants satisfaction with the product (Usability Testing). This will be a sound method for studying our website because the site has thousands of participants which can potentially give us a large sample of data which can give us relevant feedback on their satisfaction. We will do the Usability test before and after the redesign is completed to ensure that progress has been made (Usability Research Proposal Template).

f) Task Breakdown
1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) Submit Proposal to UCF (About 1 week for response) Hire company to conduct focus group (6-8 weeks for entire process) Hire company to conduct Usability Test (6-8 weeks for entire process) Evaluate feedback from testing (2 weeks) Make necessary changes to website (2-3 weeks) Conduct second round of focus groups (6-8 weeks) Conduct second round of Usability Testing (6-8 weeks) Make necessary changes if needed Final report to UCF with all necessary changes

g) Problem/Analysis
Although we are highly qualified for the project and have a detailed plan ready for success, nothing is ever perfect and we do have to recognize possible threats to our work. A rather common problem that we may have to address is keeping everyone on track. As

most already have learned, being the time keeper of a large team and an in depth can prove to be quite a challenge. To overcome these problems we will make sure that everyone is aware of the timeline and keeps in contact with each other. If we find additional problems, we might have to adjust the timeline in order to fix them.

Facilities and Equipment

Facilities: The focus groups and usability tests will be conducted in a portable testing center provided by the outside research company and since our volunteers will be college students it will be important to make them feel comfortable by providing the following pieces of furniture in the portable testing centers: A variety of comfortable Ikea couches A couple posters on the wall A few Ikea chairs A coffee table with magazines on it Additional Equipment: In order for the research to be conducted in the most reliable way possible the environment will also require these items to be close at hand: Laptops Notepads Pens Voice recorder/video recorder The testing groups will take place in the portable testing centers that are provided by the focus group and usability test Company. The centers will be dressed in order to keep the college student volunteers comfortable yielding ideal results. Testing and focus group facilitators will use computers, and video monitoring devices to conduct the research, so that it can be viewed later and evaluated. They will also use notepads to physically write some of the things said down. Laptops will be used during the usability testing to ensure that the test can be done.

Personnel
Our names our Melanie Oringer, Erica Feliciano, and Lindsey Marshall we are students at the University of Central Florida. Therefore, we are current users of the online program, Canvas. We are all currently located in Orlando and are all taking professional writing. We are hard workers and know what it takes to get the job done. In order to make the research a success we will be hiring one company to do both the focus group and the usability testing. The company is called Usability Sciences and they have been in the business for twenty-five years, giving them a great deal of experience.

Budget
Category Project Management Focus Group Before & After Usability Test Before & After Volunteer Cost Time & Expertise $3,000 Location Cost (X2) $1,600 Technology Cost (X2) $130 Cost per Group (X6) $800 Location Cost (X2) $100 Standard Set-up (X2) $1,100 $0 Total: $13,660

Conclusion
The website Canvas, used by students at the University of Central Florida had several flaws in its design, which caused it to be complicated for users. Some of them included problems with the recent activity page, the grades page, and aesthetics. To go about

analyzing the problems, we would conduct focus groups and usability tests. In order to fix the problems we would change certain aspects in the design of the website based on data obtained from the tests. Being that we are all students at UCF and use the program constantly we know exactly what works and what doesnt, it makes us qualified to complete the project.

Appendixes
"Usability Testing." Home. US Department of Health and Human Services, 8 June 2012. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. <http://www.usability.gov/methods/test_refine/learnusa/>. "Nielsen Norman Group." Focus Groups: Article by Jakob Nielsen. Nielson Norman Group, n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. <http://www.nngroup.com/articles/focus-groups/>. Kimel, Miriam Bar-Din, Dr. "Focus Group Methodology." Www.fda.gov. FDA, 4 Dec. 2003. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. <www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/03/slides/4007S1_05_Kimel.ppt>. Tortolano, Gessica. "Usability Research Proposal Template." Usability Research Proposal Template. Google, 26 Aug. 2009. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. <https://sites.google.com/site/superuserfriendly/templates/usability-research-proposaltemplate>. Simon, Judith S. "Conducting Focus Group:." Conducting Focus Group:. N.p., 10 Oct. 1999. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. <http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~glennb/mm/FocusGroups.htm>.