The Website:
Learning to cook used to be a lot harder. I'm serious; in the dark ages before the internet in order to learn how to cook you had to either find someone to teach you or find a big cookbook with lots of pictures to get you through it.
Thankfully, modern culinary adventurers have a host of websites flush with descriptions, photos, and sometimes videos to guide them through recipe after recipe.
Ever since I found allrecipes.com I've kept coming back to it. There is a bit of a learning curve, but let's see what the users think of it.
The Testers
For this report, I enlisted the help of some brave volunteers:
- The Server - Male 20's, Frequent Internet User, Favorite Website: Youtube
- The Teacher - Female 50's, Infrequent Internet User, Favorite Website: Yahoo
- The Accountant - Male 50's, Infrequent Internet User, Favorite Website: Zillow
- The Student - Male 20's, Frequent Internet User, Favorite Website: BBC News
Scenario 1
You're new to the page and want to set yourself up with an online recipe book. How do you do that?
Results:
All of the participants (eventually) found the sign up link: Teacher and Server were the fastest.
Student got stuck clicking ont he "Follow us on" links
and when that didn't work he read the navigation bar to find the button.
As soon as the page loaded and I read the scenario, the teacher exclaimed "oh, here it is in
yellow; that was nice of them."
Bonus Points to the Site:
When the Accountant was frustrated and tried to backspace to the mainpage, the pop-up window actually had the information that he wanted. This has to be the first time that I have ever considered a pop-up useful.
Scenario 2
You're at home. The dreaded call: someone is coming over, they're on their way. What are you going to feed them? Check the fridge: you have-
- A Potato
- An Onion
- Some Chicken
- Some Cream
Thank goodness the spices are stocked! Now, what can you make for dinner? How about dessert?
Results:
After the Server lameted having no time to go the grocery store, he looked over the mainpage again. He could see an "Ingredient Search" button, but filled the recipe seach bar by mistake at first. But quickly figured out how to use the search.
The Teacher said that she didn't need a recipe and started listing all the things that she could make with the ingredients provided.
I reminded her that the test was so see if she could find the recipe, not if she needed one.
Similar to the Server, the Teacher had issues with the Search Bar. She could see that there was an ingredient
The Accountant asked me why he needed to make something and said he would just order pizza. After some deliberation, he typed "potato" into the search bar and clicked on the first receipe.
The Student went right to the ingredient search button and clicked it, bringing up the search. He complained that the button was not a darker color to make it more obvious.
Scenario 3
It's dinner time, but you don't know what to make....can you find something for dinner? What about lunch?
Results:
The Student and the Accountant both typed "Lunch" into the main Searchbar. Among other receipes the first tab was labed "Lunch Recipes" and it was a simple click to pull up all the lunch items. They repeated the process for dinner.
In contrary, the Server and the Teacher both examined the webite a bit before clicking on the "Browse" dropdown menu which pulls up all the catagories. The Teacher was excited to see the "World Cuisine" items while the Server quickly started browsing the "Health and Diet" items.
Scenario 4
Your scalloped potatos were a hit but now everyone wants the recipe...how are you going to go about sharing it?
Results:
The Accountant was the quickest. He opened the recipe and hit the print button. "I'll print it out and hand it to them, problem solved."
The Server and the Student were the next quickest, they chose the facebook share and sent the recipe to a friend.
The Teacher took the longest but only because they stopped to read over the recipe and rate it. (It was not a favorable review).
Conclusion
The goal of a website should be to reduce the learning curve as much as possible in order to limit user frustration. Each of the testers struggled with at least one task, and each had one they excelled with.
My take-aways from this test (small changes that might help user experience) are:
- Move the "Create a Profile" button from the right side to the left, next to the "Browse" Drop-down menu.
- Darken or change the color of the "Ingredient Search" button to make it more obvious.
- The nav bar is already crowded, however, they might be able to reclaim some space by removing the three-line drop down menu on the right. All of that information could be at the buttom or elsewhere on the mainpage.