Case Study: Rice University

For the final case study of the Ironhack prework, I was required to run a usability test for the website of a famous American university, chosen from a list. I was then required to produce prototypes addressing the pain points discovered from this usability test. The university I chose was Rice University in Houston. I chose this website because I lived in Texas for a while and have been to Houston, and have a family member who went to Rice University. The user I chose to interview also came from Texas so was somewhat familiar with the school, although she had never used the website.

The university was first established in 1912, and so is already over 100 years old. It was founded after its namesake, William Marsh Rice, was murdered with chloroform by his lawyer, butler and valet, who together conspired to forge his will and convince everyone that he had changed his will before he died to bequeath the bulk of his money to his lawyer. However, the document and cheques had errors and were found by investigation to be fraudulent, his death was ruled to be murder, and his original will was discovered which declared the majority of his fortune to be left to found a research centre and school: Rice University. (UX side note: this information is not easily found on the Rice website) It is now one of the leading universities for undergraduate studies in the USA.

Here is what the home page looks like:

The User Interview

The user I selected is an English teacher living in Japan from Texas, in her mid-20s. She would describe herself as an average user, not technologically advanced, but able to find her way around most sites. In order to ease stress, I opted to record the screen and our voices for the entire testing process, so I wasn’t constantly writing or taking notes.

Her initial response to the website and its interface was: “It’s clean, it’s nice. There aren’t a bunch of pop ups. It’s neatly organised, the headers are clear. It looks fine to me. Not too overwhelming.” And I would have to agree with her. It’s quite a pretty looking website. It looks “clean”.

Then I gave her three tasks to complete from the home page of the website, without the aid of the search bar. The tasks were as follows:

1. Find the school mascot.
2. Find out if they offer foreign language instruction for Arabic.
3. Find the nearest airport.

As a precaution, I made sure to attempt all of these tasks myself before the interview, to ascertain whether they were at all possible.

Finding the school mascot was a little confusing, but didn’t take too long. Mainly because they have several different headers it could possibly be under: “Rice Facts”? “Rice Traditions”? “About Rice”? “Campus Life”? There’s even a scrolling bar at the bottom of the home page called “Quick Facts” but it’s not there. She found it after clicking around for a couple minutes under “Rice Traditions.” Not immediately obvious, but not too bad.

Finding out if they offer a language course in Arabic took longer. If you hover over the “Academics” tab, you can see options for “Majors, Minors and Programs”, “Graduate Programs” and “Departments.” However, these titles are deceiving. “Majors, Minors and Programs” is strictly speaking undergraduate programs, and contains a list of available majors and minors under various department headings. “Graduate Programs” does not take you to a comparable list of available majors and minors for graduates, but an information page with instructions for enrolling in postgraduate studies. And “Departments” takes you to the complete list of departments for both undergraduates and postgraduates. However, the departments are still listed under the “Academics” tab, so to skip a click you could simply click on the department you want from the tab. Observe:

When I found the Arabic course, I discovered it under “Departments,” then “School of Humanities” where there was an option for “The Center for Language and Intercultural Communication”. When my tested user found it, she selected a separate page for the “School of Humanities”, which didn’t have a list of available courses, but rather more quick facts and a completely different navigation bar:

Her comment at this point was: “Well this is very annoying.”

And in the navigation bar, there were options for programs like “African Studies”, “Jewish Studies” and “Spanish and Portuguese Studies”, but no Arabic. Which led my user to want to give up and conclude that the school offered various African languages, Hebrew, Spanish and Portuguese, but no other languages. However, the complete list of languages was found tucked away under the heading “Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication”, and even then it wasn’t immediately obvious. She had to hover over the navigation bar again to find a list of programs offered.

Finding the nearest airport took her less than 30 seconds, as there is a tab for “Maps” at the very top of the page which has a section for airports.

Pain points

While the website looked “clean”, and some things weren’t too difficult to locate, the primary frustrations came from its structuring of information. There were too many categories and subcategories to choose from, and many of them overlapped or were irrelevant. They had separate pages for information that could have been included with another subcategory. The graphic design of the website could stay the same and users would be happy, but the navigation bar, options and categories needed serious simplification and restructuring.

In the case of the Rice University website, the simplified categories might look like this:

I would love to have constructed a fully functional paper prototype with moving bits, but while traveling I didn’t have any of the materials required, except my notebook and pens. So here is a drawing, and I will try to invoke your imagination.

In this instance I have deleted the categories for “Academics”, “Athletics” and “Alumni”. “Academics” has become “Departments”, so there is an obvious list of the different departments you can apply for at Rice. “Athletics” and “Alumni” can become absorbed into “Campus Life”.

Upon clicking on “School of Humanities”, a list of available programs for undergraduates and postgraduates would be immediately obvious, with all other information being available under different headings.

In conclusion

What I’ve learned from conduction this interview and attempting this case study is:

• What I find easy might not necessarily be easy for another user. Like Margaret Gould Stewart stated, “Users get very efficient at using bad design.”
• “Looks clean” doesn’t necessarily equate to “is clean.”
• Don’t get terribly sick while traveling.