User Feedback

User 1 is well-established in her career and is continuing her education by building upon existing skills. Her critiques included a lack of information about who the target program audience is, what the user is expected to do when they come to the home page, and why taking a quiz is relevant to using the website. She gave excellent feedback about the tone and wording of our quiz, helping us to see that we need to adopt a more uplifting tone with our questions. She also gave feedback on allowing the user to select multiple options in answering individual questions. She suggested a tutorial for the profile page, assisting the user in understanding the benefits and uses of the various sections.

User 2 is an ITM student and working to develop her tech skills. She questioned the age group we were targeting for our website as well as making the same suggestion about allowing the user to choose multiple options in the quiz. She helped us to realize the ambiguity of our design on the page detailing the user’s customized tech quest. She then navigated to the user profile page. She recognized that we had duplicated icons for our achievements and bookmarks. Her most illuminating observation was that when she completed her quiz, she would be paired with female role models to follow for her feed, which told us we needed to be clearer about what will happen when someone takes the quiz and what the next steps will be.

User 3 is an adjunct TC professor who has a different skill set from our previous user-testers. Her critiques included suggesting the use of direct compliments and comments for progress, rather than a more abstract system of fantasy-based “badge” icons. Her discussion eventually brought up the idea of Facebook’s group badges, where users receive badges next to their name for “Conversation Starter,” “Visual Storyteller,” and “New Member.” She also asked about incorporating meetups and conference listings in the platform, to facilitate more options for networking. When she arrived at the personalized tech quest page, she commented on the background chosen, as well as suggesting we provide a generic feed for users to browse before they sign up for a profile. She also gave the feedback that as a mentor, she would not want to be assigned a quest—just given the option to start being paired with mentees. She praised the importance of a website like this because of how vital having mentors on her journey has been for her. Additionally, she saw the benefit of providing a platform for women who do not currently have access to grad school and are pursuing tech expertise through self-directed learning.