NASA Portal Usability

Transcripts from Usability Test

General Public: Clip 1
Test participant: And that would give people continuing presence of what NASA is trying to do. Keep reminding them everyday if this sort of thing could be free it could be worth its weight in gold in terms of public relations.
Moderator: And what do you mean by that?
Test participant: Well NASA lives, breathes and dies based upon the amount of public support it has both in Congress and in the public at large. So its, all of its funding is based upon the priorities as they appear in people’s minds. NASA is constantly is fighting a battle to gain people’s understanding and acceptance that a certain amount of our treasure has to be spent on understanding the universe.
Moderator: Okay, well currently you are viewing the homepage and what I would like for you to do is to just spend a few moments and feel free to scroll up and down this homepage and let me know your thoughts of what is being presented to you here.
Test participant: Okay the first thing I will say is that sometimes there are some people who will not let any page be scrolled.
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General Public: Clip 2
Test participant: We have several different things we got some pictures that are sort of directing our attention towards several articles. And up here we got types of things about NASA events, multimedia, missions. And a chance to go to Spanish, for kids, for students, for educators, for media and press. Okay kids, students, educators, media and press, are those the only people that are suppose to use this? It seems to me that the people at large are another category, but that is not included there. Anyway…
Moderator: And that is a good question. Areas on the left side there you were looking at for media and press but for kids, for students, what would you expect to from those areas?
Test participant: What is the difference between for kids and for students? You know kids are students. Lets see what is happening here. If I punch for students, well nothing…there we go something happened. Okay, for kids, I can go back. Educator astronaut..okay so they are taking a certain number of news articles that they think students will be interested in.. and placing them with thumbnails.
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Educator (pre-school): Clip 3
Moderator: What do you think that second link would do for you?
Test participant: Is it the educator astronaut site? (Music Plays) It’s a little loud the music.
Moderator: I’m sorry you can turn down the volume on the speaker if you want to.
Test participant: Yeah maybe I will do that.
Moderator: I should have told you that from the beginning, sorry.
Test participant: I am very sensitive to loud noise though. I guess it would I probably would actually click on that Astronaut Educator I'm not sure what it would mean. But since it had the word educator I would click on it. But I am clicking on kids first because…
Moderator: And if you will before we break it there would you click back?
Test participant: Yeah.
Moderator: Sorry we are going to just spend a couple of minutes here and get your feedback before we move to much further into the site.
Test participant: Okay sorry.
Moderator: No not a problem at all I didn't tell you. What do you think of this page?
Test participant: It has a lot of information right there.
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Educator (pre-school): Clip 4
Test participant: But um they are presented, there is just a lot of information when you click on these and so it takes a while to decide what you want to actually click on. Because you just can’t look at something and know exactly what it is right away.
Moderator: Okay, as a pre-school educator what would you hope to get out of this page? What is missing for you?
Test participant: Um maybe…ah… educator features…ah… classified by age.
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