Usability Testing

I would estimate that this visual is used for an introductory earth science course at the middle school (6-9th grade) level. While this visual has the foundational basis to be a solid learning tool, the designers appear to have lost interest about halfway through the Diamond Design process (p 89). Spending more time in the ACE process, especially the Evaluate phase of the ACE process, would have been beneficial to this designer as this slide could use improvement in the three Evaluation areas: Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Appeal (p 74). First, the graphic has failed to achieve its goal of effectiveness as the decorative visual (p 6), that was probably an attempt to make the image learner-friendly (p 31), is distracting and this distraction detracts from the slides effectiveness. This decorative visual and text combination is an example of a selection issue (p 81) where the designer has not given due attention to the contrast between the image and the text. This issue might be addressed through the use of a solid colored text box (only one!) and the use of a high contrast color text. The efficacy is also lacking in this image. There is little organization on the slide and I found the poor proximity and alignment of many of the elements in the image to be confusing and distracting (CARP p 80). Proper alignment of the objects with one another through the use of baselines would assist the learner in understanding what information is intended to be associated. Flow and association between objects would also be improved by tightening up the proximity of related objects such as the arrows with their associated texts as currently the arrows are floating in space. Lastly, the appeal of this slide is low due to the above cited issues as well as the use of multiple (poorly) overlapping text boxes. A confusing slide is does not "convince learners that they will understand it" (p 87). To the contrary, a confusing slide de-motivates a learner. A redesign of this slide might look something like the image posted here: