[WUD] World Usability Day: Third Session, Student Panel

World Usability Day 2006
Landmark College, Putney Vermont

Conference notes by Meg Houston Maker

Student Panel: Discovering Usability Issues in our Classwork

Students: Isabel Arathoon, Nick Braley, Landon Gottlieb, Shaw Bates All from Landmark College

Landon opens describing a class project in which he produced a paper on the song "Los Angeles is Burning" and used the usability lab to document his process of using PowerPoint to create the final presentation. Landon has AD/HD, and is not a fan of PowerPoint because the application itself is distracting and makes the process of creating the presentation "so much harder.... PowerPoint should just be thrown away!" he says. Landon played a tape from the usability lab showing his process of struggling to create the presentation PowerPoint file. The main pane of the film is the computer screen, with PowerPoint loaded. There is also an inset of Landon's face, as from a camera mounted on top of the display. The film is riveting. It so clearly demonstrates how impossible the product is to use in the creative process. Landon blames his AD/HD for his difficulties, and the "jumping around" effect of using the tools, but it seems clear this is mostly about the product's usability.

Shaw did a similar project, and shows his tape from the lab. Shaw's tape shows his struggle to work with and within the PowerPoint tools. At one point he gets lost in the app by hitting a button by mistake. Toward the end of the tape it's clear his presentation is coming along. "This is how the learning process works for me," he says, "you start with not knowing much, and then learn a lot."

Nick Braley discuses his use of Dragon and Kurzweil. Dragon allows him to talk his papers and have them be typed for him. He went from straight Fs to As and Bs. Kurzweil, a text reader, reads his research materials to him, removing the process steps from his learning, and allowing him to focus on the material to be learned. These two tools have given him, he says, a new way of expressing himself.

Isabel uses Kurzweil and Inspiration and couldn't live without them. The act of reading was, previously, an act of decoding. Kurzweil lets her focus on extracting meaning and information, rather than simply decoding. For writing, she uses Inspiration to create concept maps to organize her ideas and ensure that her paper topics are well organized. These dimensional topic maps then convert into outlines that she can use for writing. Additionally, she uses color coding because to reinforce her auditory and visual learning approaches.

Questions and Answers

Q: For Shaw and Landon: What did you learn from watching the process of creating your presentations, by looking at the usability lab tape? A: Shaw: I learned when to ask for help, ask the professors for help. Landon: I learned I need to slow down and use the tool's capabilities.

Q: How do you use Kurzweil to take notes?
A: Isabel: While it's reading, you can pause the reading and open a toolbar to attach a note to a section or words.

Q: If you had a mic that let you talk to the developers of the software that you love or hate, what would you say? What one thing?
A: Nick: in Dragon, the training process takes a long time, so he couldn't use it in the first semester. So he would change the training process and accuracy, because his version is about 95% accurate.
Isabel: She tried to train Dragon, but her first language is Spanish and she has an accent, so she was not able to use Dragon.
Landon: He uses Dragon a lot, and agrees with both of the above comments.
Shaw: If someone were to invent a new technology, it would be something that hooks up to your head so that when you think, it types for you!

Q: Have you used the templates in Inspiration?
A: Isabel: sometimes, but they're not always applicable.