Drupal Usability Testing

Dries Buytaert, the creator and project lead for Drupal (an open source content management system) has high praise for the work of our graduate students:

The Interaction Design and Information Architecture program at the University of Baltimore and a team of eight graduate students have completed a usability study on Drupal. The result is a great report (PDF) and an incredibly valuable video which they shared on drupal.org. It is too important not to share...

Designing For Kids

Students in the "Interaction and Interface Design" class designed educational programs for children ages 10-14, as part of an NSF grant supporting participatory technology design with children.

Food Fight

Students also worked with the KidsTeam design partners (ages 10-14) to develop games based on the book Alice in Wonderland. This flash based "Food Fight" game (created by Christine Abela, Andrea Gorden, and John Thompson - graduate students working on the NSF KidsTeam project) went from concept to delivery in a little over a month. It remains a regular favorite with our middle-school design partners.

Form Navigation

Students in the "Research Methods for Interaction Design" class used Tobii eyetracking equipment to perform research into how users navigate web-based forms, focusing on how users interact with page elements, navigate through pages, and locate information.

University Website Redesign

Students in the "Research Methods for Interaction Design" also conducted focus groups to evaluate student priorities for a portal into university services, then used their findings to identify design priorities for professional development.

Usability Testing

In another project, students performed qualitative comparative usability testing of online course management systems such as Blackboard and WebCT with both faculty and student users. The testing compared ease of use, learnability, and subjective satisfaction for tasks such as creating assignments, submitting work, taking quizzes, participating in discussion groups, and managing grades.