CSUS Writing Handbook Project

Usability Testing Documents

For a major part of our project, we had to devise testing methods for testing the writing handbook. This part of my portfolio will show the testing documents that were used for the usability testing on the student volunteers. There were two types of tests that were used for the usability testing and they were the Plus Minus and Task-Based Test respectively. The Plus minus test is meant to test the overall page design of the writing handbook by having test subjects either put a plus for an element on the page that they liked or a minus for an element for an element on the page that they did not like.

My contributions for these documents are that I did research that determined that these were the usability testing methods that we would be using for testing the writing handbook. The basis of my research was on the concepts that I learned while enrolled int he technical writing course at Sacramento State (ENGL-120T). I specifically saved the sources that I gathered for that class and used them to help me with my research for the usability testing documents we were going to use for the writing handbook. Then one of my teammates, named Brianna, and I worked on creating the Task-Based testing document. Brianna made the questions and I checked over the questions created the task-based document itself. My other teammate Jonathon create the plus minus test.

These testing documents represent primarily external communication along with some internal communication. What makes it technically both is that the testing documents were designed to be utilized by student volunteers to test the writing handbook. However this document also was used for our internal communication for our group since we had to organize and analyze the information. Nevertheless, these documents were meant to collect information from the student body about the writing handbook.

Plus-Minus Feedback Excerpt.pdf

Plus Minus Test

usability-test-plan for writng handbook(1).pdf

Task-Based Test/Plan

Student Writing Handbook Survey

This is the Student writing handbook survey. This document was specifically curated to communicate with professors by asking them about the writing handbook. The survey was created to ask professors if they would make any suggestions on what changes would need to be mad for the writing handbook.

I was tasked with creating the survey for the writing handbook. I specifically wanted to prompt the professors by asking them if they had any suggestions about changes to the writing handbook that we could make. This Google Forum was geared towards the content of the writing handbook and asking professors if they would use it in their classroom or not.

Unfortunately, we did not have time to send this out to professors since time was running out in the semester and we had to make important changes to the writing handbook. Due to the time constraints we had to shelve this survey but if we did had the opportunity to implement this survey it would have been classified as external communication to the professors at Sacramento State.

Writing Handbook - Part 2

Part two of the writing handbook focused on what students in the writing program could face while attending Sacramento State. The specific pages I provided were the pages that needed to be changed/updated. These sections needed the format of the definitions to be changed into the textbox format and a lot of the words needed the bold and the highlights removed from them. The last thing that I needed to do was change the look of the part 2 cover so then it was easier to read.

Below, I have the pages of the writing handbook that I specifically worked on while my group mates and I divided and conquered the tasked that we listed out for ourselves to change the writing handbook . I specifically wen through my sections and fixed the capitalization of the words that were being defined. Then I looked at page 35 titled "The Rhetorical Situation" and added more definitions to the page and I removed/modified the bolded text at the beginning of each section. I have edited the sections within part two of the writing handbook document . I think the most tedious thing that I had to manually change was the fonts to Karla but luckily it was not to hard to do.

This part of the writing handbook required me to meet up with my group to list out the needed changes. Before our meeting my group and I needed to meet up over zoom and process the notes that we made for the previous version of the handbook. We gathered our notes an added them to a word document over Microsoft teams and after doing that we split up the workload for making the changes in the handbook between me and Jonathan . I think that this communication demonstrated how coordinated our in-house communications were. The purpose of these documents wore meant to demonstrate what changes I made to the handbook and the process of those changes.

Academic Writing Part Two Cover.pdf

Part 2 Cover

For this page I changed the color of the background from bright orange to white with black text contrasting the white background.

College Reading Processes.pdf

College Reading Processes

For this page, I changed the highlighted/bold text to a normal text format.

Documenting Sources.pdf

Documenting Sources

I changed the highlighted/bold text to the normal format.

Rhetorical Situation.pdf

The Rhetorical Situation

I changed the format for the definitions by

Understanding College Writing Assignments.pdf

Understanding College Writing Assignments

I changed the format for the definitions and changed the bold/ highlighted words to normal texts.

Writing Handbook and Intern Performance Evaluation

This is the final writing handbook. This is a culmination of all of the work that my team and I did over this semester. This version of the writing handbook has all of the information updated and has all of the corrections and changes we made from our proofreading and usability testing results.

What I did was finish looking the handbook and finding any instances where there was any unnecessary bolding/highlighting of words & sentences. I looked over part 1 & 2 to see if there was anything that needed to be changed regarding the highlighted/bold letters & sentences. Then I updated the GWAR information since it was not up to date. Basically my job was to make the necessary changes and a lot of the work that I did was looking through this section of the writing handbook and cross referencing it with Brianna's document listing the updated information. Then Jonathan took over to make the final changes to the Handbook.

This making the final changes to the document required a surmountable amount of communication since Jonathan had undergone surgery and had to take time off to recover. I think that the particular week that we were supposed to finish the writing handbook was a stress test for our team's in-house communication and cooperation skills. I had to make sure that I kept track of the changes that I made to the handbook and I had to relay those changes to Jonathan when he was available to meet with us the following week after his recovery front he surgery. I was able to communicate what changes I made to the writing handbook and what issues I ran into while making the changes and letting Jonathan know of the issues changing the document. This stress test of our in-house communications demonstrated our group's ability to communicated effectively and demonstrated our adaptability as future professionals.

Student Writing Handbook Full Revision.pdf

Matt Intern Performance Evaluation.pdf

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