Nidhi Sethi

Nidhi Sethi, Event Coordinator

Association for Women in Computing
University of Maryland - College Park

November 28, 2010

Jandelyn (Jan) Plane, Faculty Advisor

Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland - College Park

RE: Approval of proposal for AWC’s website redesign & Development: Developing a Student
centered Website

Professor Jan:

In October of 2009, a comprehensive survey was completed by the AWC officers to help
understand the wide array of capabilities available for the Association for Women in computing
website—Maryland Chapter today and identify deficiencies and long-term needs of the current
site, resulting in a high-level vision of the future of the AWC website. In response to the
participants unanimous concern over the state of the present AWC website, please find enclosed
a report entitled “AWC Website Redesign”, to update and redesign the current website.

The Website Redesign Team involved in conducting the user requirement analysis through the
surveys and focus groups consisted of Asmi Joshi, Michon Edmondson, Wendy Mock, Melissa
Perez, Hailey Lin and me. The members of the team conducted, evaluated and discussed the
feedback received from the participants of the surveys and focus groups and determined the
major improvements required for the current AWC website.

In this proposal, we present the summary of our findings. We detail the scope for developing
each of the functional applications for the AWC website. We highlight the main functional
requirements gathered from the surveys and the focus groups. Finally we include a breakdown of
timeline and the agenda for the upcoming meetings.

The AWC owes a great debt of gratitude to Professor Ben Bederson and his students for
assisting us with conducting the website related research at the HCI lab. I would also like to
thank the WRT for its hard work in conducting, reviewing, analyzing and documenting the user
requirements for the AWC website

We welcome the opportunity to discuss this proposal with you in greater detail.

Regards,

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Nidhi Sethi
Event Coordinator, AWC

Association for Women in

Computing Website
Redesign

2010-2011

Prepared by: Nidhi Sethi

sethinidhi@umd.edu

December 05, 2010

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary 5

Purpose

Problem/Solution Identification 8

Background 9

Discussion of Findings 10

User Requirement Gathering Process 10

User Surveys 10

User Focus Groups 11

Focus Group & Surveys Summary

15

Look and Feel 15

Navigation

16

New Feature

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Improve Feature

18

Recommendations

Redesign Process 20

Project Team- Website Redesign Team 23

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Conclusions 24

References 26

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ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

Figure 1.1: 5

Figure 1.2: 14

Figure 1.3: 19

Figure 1.4: 23

Appendix A : Survey Questionnaire

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Executive Summary

This report documents the findings of the usability evaluation of the Association for Women in

Computing website-Maryland chapter (Figure 1.1) carried out by the Website Redesign Team in

September 2010.

(Figure 1.1)

The Website Redesign Team(WRT) consists of:

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Asmi Joshi; Secretary

Michon Edmondson; chair

Wendy Mock; chair

Melissa Perez: Communications Liason

Hailey Lin ; Website Updates

Nidhi Sethi; Event Coordinator

Focus group sessions were held on campus to elicit comments from our users (students,

staff and faculty). Experience with these focus groups showed that AWC needs to have a web

presence that is useful and functional. The comments were used to identify the shortcomings and

specific problem. During our research phase it became clear that the website needed more than

just a new look and feel. Our intentions for the project shifted as we gained a better

understanding of our audiences and the ways in which they choose and expect to interact with

AWC. As a result, we are not just redesigning the website – we are redeveloping it.

In order to organize a successful redesign process that focuses on the benefits to the end

user of the site, we should employ user centered design methodology, “a philosophy that places

the person (as opposed to the 'thing') at the center…”(SIG, 2010). We want to learn as much as

we could from our core user group of the website – CS students, faculty and staff. We

specifically want to focus on improvements that might help those users such as undergraduates

who might be looking forward to getting involved with on-campus Organizations. To move

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forward towards a website that fully satisfies the needs of its users, we want to put a strong focus

on usability and its measurement of success as “the extent to which a product can be used by

specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a

specified context of use. (ISO, 2010)” This document explains the process and specifics

included in creating the system, as well as next steps in further implementation and evaluation.

The overarching goals this project includes:

○ A comprehensive research phase where students, staff and members share their

views on the current website and their suggestions for improvement, throughout

the developmental process of the website

○ A new look and feel consistent with AWC’s brand identity, as adopted by other

school’s AWC websites.

○ A new AWC home page and Events Calendar.

○ Additional features as recommended by the users, as well as improving the

current features.

○ Involving the users throughout the design and the testing process, and getting

regular user feedback.

○ We have limited staff and financial resources, with limited time for web updates. As

such, it is essential that we have a website that can be easily updated by staff that has

little technical background.

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Purpose

Problem Identification

The Association for Women in Computing has done a wonderful job of keeping in contact those

females at UMD who have taken up a career in computer science. Now, in 2010, one of the most

preferred methods of communicating and researching is via the internet, and it is for this reason

that the AWC website needs a complete makeover. The AWC's website has not seen a

significant update in the last five years and plays a rather unhealthy role in new, enthusiastic

individuals looking for common grounds. Furthermore, AWC Maryland chapter is part of an

even bigger association; a poor website design will leave a bad impression on our Computer

Science program here at University of Maryland.

Solution Identification

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This is a very opportune time to undertake a website redesign initiative that could guide and

focus improvements in quality and utility. The site will build awareness and strengthen the

purpose with which AWC was created. In addition, the new site will communicate the essence of

AWC’s vision and values through organized content and a design that will appeal to various key

audiences. Our goal is for this to be a collaborative effort with our student composed and led

Website Redesign Team (WRT) to design a site that will ensure a pleasurable, informative

experience to the audience and will encourage repeat visits.

Background

Definition

The technical Definition of AWC as stated in the mission statement of the website is

“The Association for Women in Computing is a non-profit professional organization

for women and men who have an interest in information and technology. The

Association is dedicated to the advancement of women in the technology fields.”

Purpose

The Association’s mission statement describes its purpose “to provide opportunities for

professional growth through networking and through programs on technical and

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career-oriented topics. AWC encourages high standards of competence and

promotes a professional attitude among its members.”

AWC Maryland strives to demonstrate that advancing women through technology is beneficial

to the bottom line of business and seeks to encourage more young women to pursue degrees in

technology. Much of the AWC Maryland’s success in the past can be attributed to the ability to

interact with the website’s visitors. About 80% of our existing members learned about the AWC

Maryland chapter through the UMD’s Computer Science Webpage. However, recently our

existing members and officers have expressed concern about the poor maintenance of the current

AWC website and feel the need for a more proactive approach in attracting and retaining women

in male-dominated field of Computer Science.

Discussion of findings

The Association for Women in computing website redesign was undertaken with two main goals

in mind:

• To improve the usability of the site for its primary users (students, faculty and staff)

• To update the ‘look and feel’, architecture and navigation according to user needs and to

better represent the 21st century.

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• To create a new look and feel that is inviting to our users and reflects the purpose with

which AWC was created.

In order to fulfill these goals, we established various methods of receiving feedback from our

users and used this feedback to inform our redesign decisions. After analyzing user needs from

the survey and the focus groups results, it was determined that the website home page needed to

surface all identified main user tasks with ‘one click’, i.e. the most important tasks needed to be

directly available via a link on the home page.

User Requirement Gathering Process

In accordance with our user centered methodology, we planned many opportunities as part of the

lifecycle of the redesign process to speak with users and to observe them using the current AWC

website. Meetings with users took many formats, from one-on-one interviews and focus group

sessions to more active processes such as website walkthrough. The Website Redesign Team

carefully tracked and documented each opportunity we had to interact with our user base and

put together a very good list of do’s and don’ts for the website redesign as addressed in this

proposal.

User Survey

In October 2009, we created a survey with the purpose of beginning to get information

from the AWC main user base of members, students and staff regarding their AWC website use

and the areas within that they liked, disliked or found difficult to use. Further, the users were

also asked to suggest additional features that they would like to see on the AWC website and

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illustrate how that feature will help other AWC website users. The questions focused on

participant’s AWC website use (Appendix A).

The link to the survey and requests were circulated to the CS course lists and the

participation was also requested by the word of mouth during the class. The students were

incentivized by providing them with a surprised goodie bags for taking the survey. Over 35

participants responded, including our current officers, members, faculty and advisors. All

responses were read thoroughly and documented individually.

The information from the survey was an excellent starting point for focusing our

redesign efforts and re-iterated much of what we had already suspected regarding the usability of

the site and areas such as intuitiveness of the site to focus on. The full survey results and the

graphical representation can be obtained from the CS advisor, Ms. Brandi Adams at

brandi@cs.umd.edu.

User Focus Groups

We next determined that we wanted to spend more time with our target users discussing

some of the points that had come up repeatedly in the surveys. We decided to arrange focus

group in association with the Graduate Students at the Human Computer Interactions lab, on

campus.

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The focus groups basically comprised of different sets of users - CS undergraduate

students, staff and members. The rationale behind picking these focus groups was to model all

ideal users of the AWC website which includes incoming freshmen students in CS who want to

get involved with on-campus groups, our officers and existing members and faculty advisors.

In order to recruit student participants, we placed flyers on many of the desks and

workstations in the Computer Science Instructional Center, A.V. Williams, Math Building,

Engineering buildings . These flyers advertised a $10 gift certificate to focus group participants.

We scheduled one hour sessions with each user group type, including one project team

person to lead the discussion and one to take notes. We guided the discussion through some

questions that we created based on our learning from the survey.

Each group was introduced to the process this way:

We are going to look at six university’s AWC websites. These websites were chosen not

because they are pretty, but because each uses a very different navigational structure and

features. We will run through a few scenarios for each site. As you find your way through the

site, let us know your impressions good and bad. If you have ideas or something bothers you,

you like something or don’t, relevant to the scenario or not, just shout it out. Look at the sites

first as if you are coming to them for the first time as a future student, parent, staff or faculty

member, whatever human the scenario speaks for. Secondly look at them with the perspective of

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your own talents and experiences. We want to know what you think website users would think,

and we want to know what you think.

The users were provided a system and were asked to look through all the five AWC

websites and walk through with us and answer some questions based on the scenario.

Scenario 1: Do you think the UMD AWC chapter website should maintain the brand identity

by using the global logo of the AWC? (AWC chapter logos)

The scenario was asked of all the 3 focus groups.

Scenario 2: Meeting Minutes

Subtask 1: Find where the meeting minutes are on the AWC website?

Subtask 2: Looking at the other university’s website, tell us what is the most intuitive

place to put the link to the meeting minutes.

Note: Only one focus group member went to the “Meeting Minutes” icon. The other

focus group members were unable to see the footer.

Scenario 3: Would you like the website to have a tool to be able to connect with the association

members and officers online?

Subtask 1: Users were asked for their preferred method of communication.

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Subtask 2: Would you like to have a direct interaction with social media such as

facebook and Twitter so that updates to the website will automatically flow to the

connected social

Scenario 4: Design

Subtask 1: Do you like the color palette of the AWC website? Why or why not?

Subsask 2: Do they have any suggestions as per the font, color scheme or the website

layout?

Scenario 5: Additional Features

Subtask 1: Would you like to see any new features on the AWC website?

Subtask 2: How will this feature help the purpose with which the site was created?

(Current AWC website as of 2010)

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(Figure 1.2)

Focus Group and the Surveys Summary

We then clustered the improvement comments and recommendations according to their subject

matter. These fell into approximately 4 main groups, such as ‘Navigation’, ‘New Feature

requests ’, ‘Improve Feature requests’ and ‘Look and Feel’.

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Participants believe that a good website design for the AWC website is very important for

familiarizing students about the mission with which AWC was created:

“ It would be very important.”

“It would be cool to network with other women in technology.”

“Good Network Opportunities.”

“AWC website is absolutely a critical source of networking for the women in CS.”

Look and Feel

There was an overall consensus that the AWC Maryland chapter website, should adhere to the

AWC brand logo, like all the other AWC universities chapter websites. The survey takers and

the participants of the focus groups, alike, expressed concern with the present AWC logo of the

UMD chapter.

According to one of the participant: “The UMDs AWC logo is so different in character that you

don’t even identify it with the same context as you would with the global logo. It is straying

away from the brand image of AWC.”

AWC chapter logos should be created as the chief means by which AWC Chapters can identify

and associate themselves with Association of Women in Computing; therefore the chapter logos

are essential in keeping brand integrity.

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Some other issues, as addressed by the participants, concerning the look and the feel of the

website were:

“ The website layout is very left-aligned”

“The colour theme is nice but palette is too monotonous”

“The numbering on the menu seems meaningless”

“The emptiness of the total thing looks more childish than minimalistic.”

Navigation

Overall, the participants seem satisfied with the navigation on the website, since every important

link is one click. However, during the focus group meeting, when the participants were asked to

find the link to the meeting minutes, almost everyone, starting looking through the website

panels to find the “meeting minutes” link, and missed the footer (Figure 1.1).

Another problem that surfaced during the focus groups was that the users felt that the panels on

the both side of the website looked empty. The users felt that the homepage of the website looks

empty and suggested that they would like to see interesting stuff on the web page.

New Features

Some of the new features that our users would like to see in the new AWC website are

highlighted as follows:

• News feed shows latest updates to important information such as:

– Broadcasting important messages to all users.

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– Broadcasting what’s going on in the CS school today

– Broadcasting the new upcoming events.

• A facebook /Twitter page displaying AWC’s latest news stream . Our users liked the

corresponding feature from the Rochester University’s AWC website (Figure 1.3).

– There was a general consensus among our participants that today’s busy and

sophisticated consumers (prospective students, parents, alumni, and other

constituents) respond better when you use multiple channels, especially when you do

it with some imagination and flair.

Figure 1.3

(Source: Rochester University AWC website)

• Content management that will allow AWC Officers to post agendas and minutes and

make updates to pages after each meeting. This will make the site more current as staff

who are directly involved with the information presented will have control over its

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presentation. This will also serve to update our new members what we do and keep them

in the know about current AWC events.

Improve Feature

 The new website redesign should also provide for a way for the members to interact or

contact our current officers. The following source provides a good example of how to

make that information available to the new members:

Figure 1.3

(Source: AWC, Virginia Tech)

The members of the WRT team then worked on combining these thoughts and the other

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prototype ideas into the layout options that could be explored further.

Figure 1. 4

Wireframe Design for the AWC website( Created by Nidhi Sethi)

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Recommendations

Redesign Process:

The information following in this report documents our process of creating redesigned website

pages according to these standards of user centered design and usability. In order to focus clearly

on the main goals of this redesign process (as identified during the requirement gathering

process) and to insure that the most important improvements gets completed in the allotted time

frame, we propose the following steps:

Steps:

1. Low Fidelity Prototype (Paper Prototype)

The Website Redesign Team will start of by creating low fidelity prototypes based on the

information compiled from the survey and the focus groups. The low fidelity prototypes

could be scribbled on a piece of paper or mocked up using Word, Visio,HTML or other

format – the main idea was to begin to get a sense of required elements and layout

without thinking about look and feel or design. We know that we want to reduce the

information presented on the home page but still provide immediate access to all the

tasks defined in the feedback as most useful, such as finding the meeting minutes.

2. Usability testing of low fidelity prototypes (Vertical Prototyping)

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Our next step will be to do a usability test of the final version of the low fidelity

prototypes. Taking the final versions and mocking them up in HTML, linking all of the

pages we decided were important at this stage to test. The prototypes used for this round

of testing will be explicitly devoid of any design or look and feel considerations, layout

and labeling will be our testing focus.

3. High fidelity prototyping (High Fidelity Prototyping)

The information gleaned from the low fidelity usability testing can be used to make the

improvements indicated from that feedback and begin to put some design and look and

feel aspects into the redesigned pages. Various iterations on the high fidelity prototyping

process will be made.

Project Team – Website Redesign Team

The AWC website redesign process will be overseen by the Website Redesign Team.

The Website redesign team will provide general management and oversight for the AWC

website.

The 2010-2011 Web Redesign Team members are as follows:

➢ Asmi Joshi; Secretary – asmij@umd.edu

➢ Michon Edmondson; chair – meeshe@umd.edu

➢ Wendy Mock; chair – wendymock@udm.edu

➢ Melissa Perez: Communications Liason- perezm@umd.edu

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➢ Hailey Lin ; Website Updates -lin@umd.edu

➢ Nidhi Sethi; Event Coordinator-nsethi@umd.edu

The WRT will also assisted by a Graduate Staff Assistant within the Information

Systems School.

The team will generally meet every other Thursday morning to discuss the redesign project and

determine next steps. During the AWC’s normal meetings, progress made by the project lead

will be reported and specific details on any user feedback or testing outcomes will be discussed.

Often specific project tasks such as content creation, layout ideas or graphic design tasks would

be parceled out to committee members according to their domain knowledge and relevant skills.

As the project will begin to move more quickly in the spring and winter quarters, meetings will

be increased to twice a week in order to ensure that the project moves forward as quickly and

efficiently as possible.

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Proposed Timeline

a. Current Status & Next Steps

Figure 1.5

b. Timeline

The project start date if approved would be start of Spring 2011 with a completion date

planned for start of Spring 2012 with the following phases:

Key Milestones Dates

Stage 1: Low Fidelity Prototype / Usability
January 1st – January 15th
Testing

January 16th – January

Stage 2: User Testing
31st

Stage 3: High Fidelity Prototype/Usability February 1st – May 4th


Complete
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Testing

Stage 4: User Testing August 3rd – August 21st

August 21st – September

Stage 5: Iteration
1st

c. Cost

In our case, our primary constraint is budgeting and resourcing. In order to keep our

budget in check we will need to employ creativity with regards to who will perform

various tasks and what is needed to accomplish them. There are many resources available

online and in books that can be very helpful in helping the team to get up to speed on

user centered design practices, including tasks such as how to perform a usability test.

We will need to look at available skills and talents within the project team and among

our students and perform supplementary research as necessary in order to perform all

aspects of the redesign process internally. All the members and officers of AWC should

be nominated for departmental leadership awards on completion of the project to value

their contribution.

The cost incurred during the entire process will be mostly for acquiring our user base

during the testing phases of the project. The National grant for the women in CS and the

current AWC budget is big enough to accommodate all expenses.

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Conclusion

We have spent 9 months developing the redesign proposals for the AWC website using a strong

focus on the feedback that we received from our user surveys, focus groups as well as other

university’s AWC websites. We have heard from many users in many different ways – via

survey responses, one-on-one interviews, focus group discussions, walkthrough and more. Each

time we sat down and observed a user walking through a website for us, we learned something

immensely valuable. After working throughout the entire redesign proposal with the user needs

first in our mind, getting their observations and watching their actions as often as possible, we

are confident that our upcoming redesign implementation will be one that is not only visually

enjoyable, but one that is functional, usable and well thought out.

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References

Society for Technical Communication, SIG usability website

SIG usability website, Retrieved December 1, 2010 from

http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/ucd%20_web_devel.html

ISO 9241-11 1998, Retrieved Dec 2, 2010 from http://www.iso.ch/

Association for women in computing. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.awc-

hq.org/chapters.html

Association for women in computing, ann arbor chapter. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.awc-

aa.org/

Association for women in computing, houston, texas. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.awchouston.org/

Association for women in computing, northern new jersey chapter. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.awcnnj.org/

Association for women in computing, puget sound chapter. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.awcps.org/

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Association for women in computing, rochester chapter. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.awc-

uny.org/

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Appendix A : Survey Questionnaire

1. Who are you?

2. Do you know about AWC? How did you find us?

3. Have you visited the AWC website before?

4. Does the AWC website adequately reflect the purpose of the association?

5. Does it instantly impress; and does it seem to convey an enthusiasm from its website?

6. Problems or kudos on the color scheme?

7. Easy to read (both fot style and size)?

8. How did you find the layout of the site?

9. Do you know how to join AWC?

10. Can you locate the meeting minutes in the current view?

11. If you could change one thing on the site, whether it is major or minor, what would be at

the top of the to do list?

12. How intuitive and helpful is the navigation system?

13. Name your three favorite things about the site, and your three least favorite

14. In general, how satisfied are you with the AWC website?

15. Please make other general comments about the AWC website below.

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