The British Computer Society – Home Page Prototype Research

• The brief
• How we responded to the brief
• What we did
• The outcomes
• Timing and costs

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The Brief

The British Computer Society (BCS) is the leading professional body for those working in IT. The BCS has 65,000 members across over 100 countries. The BCS also awards a wide range of qualifications to IT users and specialists.

The BCS is in the process of redesigning its website and wished to get attitudinal feedback to prototype home pages.

How we responded to the brief

Following a usability test on the existing site BCS approached WUP to help with testing the prototype home pages.

We recommended presenting the prototype pages to 5 respondents covering a variety of user profiles.

In order to ensure buy-in to the research results, we felt it important that key BCS staff gained a shared understanding of the issues by observing the users on the prototype pages. By following this with a facilitated discussion, it would allow the observers to identify the key issues and agree actions in a single day.

What we did

We discussed the objectives of the project with the project manager and prepared a facilitation guide to get attitudinal feedback from the respondents. We recruited 5 respondents to the BCS’s target profiles.

The observed research was conducted in our purpose built viewing studios in Chippenham. BCS’s staff watched the research through a one way mirror.

A facilitator presented the static html page options whilst probing to assess understanding of the pages and content and to get as much attitudinal feedback as possible.

The observers were ‘active’, writing issues on post-it notes as they occurred.

Following the observed testing, a discussion was facilitated by a WUP consultant to agree the issues and appropriate actions.

The outcomes

The research allowed the observers to reach a number of important conclusions regarding the home page design. During the facilitated discussion, BCS staff gained a shared understanding of the issues, and actions were identified and prioritised.

“Many thanks – we found the session really valuable. I gave a presentation this morning to our Executive Board and they were pleased with the conclusions we are drawing on our homepage approach” Carl Harris, BCS

Timing and costs

The project was conducted in February 2009 and took less than 2 weeks to complete.

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