Acme Usability Engineering, 12345 Main Street, Seattle, WA 98195

1
Usability Study Results

• Product CalendarMax
• Features Group Scheduling
• Date September 2004

2
Product Description

• CalendarMax is a groupware product allowing
  coworkers to schedule meetings and product
  milestones and deadlines.
• This study tested the following features
• Scheduling group meetings
• Setting product milestones and deadlines
• Changing product milestones and deadlines

3
Users

• The intended audience for this features set is
• Project Managers (PMs). Their tasks include
  scheduling meetings, milestones, and deadlines.
• Product Developers. Their tasks include meeting
  milestones, notifying PMs when they cannot meet
  milestones, and delivering the product on time.

4
Study Participants

• Participants had the following characteristics

Person Job Title Already uses CalendarMax? Age Group
1 PM Y 20-29
2 PM Y 30-39
3 PM N 40-49
4 PM N 30-39
5 Developer Y 20-29
6 Developer Y 20-29
7 Developer N 20-29
8 Developer N 30-39
5
Setting Meetings Task

• Only the four PMs received this task. They were
  asked to set up two group meetings
• Set up a meeting for a group named UI Designers
  that include Todd, Mary, Karen (email addresses
  included).
• Schedule meetings for UI Designers every Monday
  and Thursday from 1000 to 1130 am.

6
Setting Meetings Findings

• Two of the four PMs were unable to find the
  dialog box for repeating the meeting at the same
  time each week.
• In their own words
• ACK! I cant find it. This is SO stupid. There
  has to be a way to let me repeat this without
  typing it in again and again. Ugh..

7
Finding Meetings Task

• All participants received this task. They were
  asked to display a calendar showing their weekly
  meetings. CalendarMax was set up before the
  study to contain five repeating meetings and one
  special meeting.

8
Finding Meetings Findings

• All of the PMs and three of four developers were
  able to successfully find their calendar in less
  than 60 seconds. No one realized that the special
  meeting did not repeat every week.
• In their own words
• Ok, so, this is my weekly calendar.

9
Recommendations

• Scheduling repeating meetings Move the repeat
  meetings weekly/monthly feature to the main
  scheduling dialog box rather than place in a
  secondary dialog box.
• Displaying non-repeating meetings Visually
  distinguish non-repeating meetings from repeating
  meetings. For example, display repeating
  meetings in a different color on the calendar
  from non-repeating meetings.