Through interviews with various teachers involved with the OSDDP website and usability studies conducted, recommendations have been made for the OSDDP Guide. The recommendations that we found to be necessary are: links for white papers and recommendation reports, the guide needs to be simplified, include a link explaining the vernacular of the site, and assign the blank pages as project topics.
The purpose for our group working on this project is to allow for maximum operability for the users and for the ease of new users to OSDDP. Currently, the OSDDP guide lacks in several sections and some that are present have been left completely blank. Through research, our goal is to offer ideas on how to modify the existing site, by adding information that can further benefit OSDDP users. We have interviewed many students and instructors, both those involved in Professional Writing classes, as well as those who are not. This has allowed us to obtain a large range of data to help us form our own recommendations to improve the OSDDP Guide.
We began to research the topic for this project by reviewing the existing OSDDP Guide. We each read through specific sections of the guide and both made suggestions on how to improve it and discussed what to add to the guide to make it more accessible to the user. The most significant problem that we encountered was the absence of information on many pages in the guide. Also, on the pages that did include information, what was offered was vague. There is a section about white papers but it only includes examples of well-written white papers. It lacks a description of what makes a good white paper.
The Professional Writing Online (PW Online) served as a great way to review the OSDDP Guide because it provided us with examples of usability studies that were conducted by well-known organizations such as Microsoft and The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Also, one of the links on this website explained what the generally accepted format for usability studies is in the work place.
The most important research area of this project was conducting interviews with students, teachers, and non-users of OSDDP to get feedback on the usability of the OSDDP Guide. We began this process by contacting two professors in the Professional Writing Department, Jennie Blankert and Dr.Suzanne Black. They helped us get started with our interviews and provided us with some good relevant information on how others feel about the current OSDDP Guide.
Dr. Black is a professor in the English department who teaches English 420, a business writing course and English 421, a technical writing course. In her 420 class, she encouraged students to post white papers to OSDDP but did not require it. She has personally contributed to the OSDDP Guide in that she was very involved in the creation of the Mission Statement.
When asked about our biggest concern with the guide, the undeveloped pages, she agreed that they may frustrate users and might seem a bit unprofessional. However, she does think that more experienced users realize that these sections were created so that they may be used as future projects for students, but it would be good for at least an outline to be included on each page.
Professor Black was very adamant about the importance of a client database being added to the guide to help students find subjects for community service learning projects. Her basis for this would be to have various companies listed that would be willing to participate in such a project so that students can save a good deal of personal time searching for a subject. If a list were included on OSDDP, all that students would have to do is find a company that interests them, make the initial contact and go from there.
The OSDDP Guide's section on white papers was another concern of Professor Black. She has had more worries than complaints about white papers in general from her students. A good description of a white paper in general and also published white papers to use as models were some suggestions that she had about how to help students having trouble grasping the concept of a white paper. The description of white papers would not necessarily need to be in the guide itself but a link to an outside source would be beneficial. She also felt that the current content of the section, which is a collection of examples that are regarded as good white papers is helpful, but more information on white papers is needed.
The English 505 class here at Purdue allowed us to come in and interview them on their opinions and feelings concerning the OSDDP Guide. They were quite open and eager to answer any of the questions that we had. Additionally, they offered a great deal of information on the OSDDP site in general. We asked this group essentially the same questions that we asked in our first interview, yet the responses that we received were totally different.
These individuals feel that the guide as a whole assumes too much from the students who are using it in the classroom. The feel as though the guide assumes that all students come from not only a technical, but also a computer savvy background which is not the case for several individuals who are working with the OSDDP site within the classroom. So, in addition to students having to learn all about this new site, it is not written in user friendly language which only makes the struggle that much more difficult. The pages are written for those who are already immersed within the OSDDP community, those who are familiar with the ins and outs of the site as well as the guide and are well versed in how to navigate themselves around. This is not practical considering that many students who are very un-familiar with the site use it regularly for class.
During the interview, they stated that the best way to gauge how the guide needs to be fixed and changed is through placing yourself back as a new user to the OSDDP. They suggested that you ask yourself the following questions: What were some of the difficulties and struggles you had as a new user, and what are some of the tips and examples that would have been beneficial in figuring out how to navigate the site? In doing this, the more change and recommendation can take place for those coming up and using the site for the first time.
One of the key issues that we asked during our interview centered on the pages that are blank. We believe that the pages were left blank in the hopes that a student would come along and decide to take on constructing the pages as an assignment. This has not happened, and there are several pages within the guide that have been left blank. We asked what they thought should happen to those pages, offering them examples such as putting up “under construction” messages or to dismantle the pages until there is content to post within them. Their consensus is that blank pages as well as the under construction signs are quite un-professional in the business world, and since the goal of this class is to prepare students for the business world then that is not a practical idea considering the circumstances. One of the first things that need to be decided is the reason why the pages are blank. If it is for the pedagogical reasons, a disclaimer needs to be put up explaining why. But, if we are focusing more on the actual use of students, then the guide needs to be changed for their accessibility. Additionally, they believe that the guide needs to explain how to use the OSDDP site and its purposes; it is not a place to show examples of student's work. This needs to go in another part on the site.
For our usability study, we interviewed individuals who had never seen or used the OSDDP Guide before. By interviewing these people, we felt that they would give us a truly objective indication of how usable the guide is to the average user. These are our findings:
Based on the research we have conducted throughout the course of this project, we have come to several conclusions that we believe will greatly improve the reliability as well as the usability of the OSDDP Guide. They are the following: