Project name

Usability testing for the new Paper Review & Paper Edit module

Project description

The CERN IT Collaboration, Devices & Applications group (IT-CDA) hosts many highly visible and popular cross-platform services.

Indico is an Open Source web application for event organisation, archival and collaboration. It is developed at CERN and evolves in the IT-CDA group.

The application is used by tens of thousands of users around the world and across projects, universities, laboratories and UN agencies.

Indico contains many modules with rich functionality, including Conference organisation in all its aspects, from Abstract collection to Paper Review, Registration, Payment, Timetable and more...

Indico's Paper Reviewing module and its new Paper Editing workflow are currently undergoing code change/development. A testable version is expected by the end of 2019. Testing with an "alpha" version could start early 2020.

This project will measure user reaction and make usability recommendations to the development team via the following method:

1. Talk to the development team to get familiar with the application.
2. Parse functionality requests submitted by users so far.
3. Take a random sample of users to measure End User Experience.
4. Set-up a simple screen recording - face recording - voice recording session for observations' post-processing.
5. Make a list of issues and proposals for improvement, based on what this usability exercise revealed.
6. Use an Open Source mock-up and image editing tool (e.g. Inkscape) to suggest more functional views and/or navigation paths.
7. Discuss the list with the developers, suggest concrete steps and finalise it with their commitment.
8. Prepare a summary report, containing a sine-qua-non and a nice-to-have part, based on what this usability exercise revealed.
9. Evaluate the relevant documentation chapters for clarity and completeness.

Pre-requisite step

In the summer 2020 the indico-team will prepare a new e-group of testers, who are conference managers and have done Review already. Candidate names will be given by Pedro (extracted from Indico) and/or Maria's WLCG and experiment contacts. Thomas Baron reminded us to include JACoW members in the testers, given that they fund this development.

Output of the project

All tests, analysis and recommendations on https://indico.cern.ch/event/956917/

 

Required skills

Expertise in web usability, optimal web navigation patterns, organisational and reporting skills, video recording and editing skills.
Very good english (B2 CEFR level).
Project can start in January 2020, depending on completion of the development process. Minimum duration is 1 month. Maximum is 6 months. This type of Internship contract offers 1.500 CHF/month. 50% work (2 days per week and 3 days per week the following week) is possible.
Please contact Maria.Dimou@cern.ch, with CV, recommendation letters and university grades.

Learning experience

Thanks to the vast variety of users that need Indico and their very different profiles, the student will gain technically (set-up of the process and analysis of the results) and organisationally (emails, doodles, web pages, reports, contact with the developers). Parsing the numerous High Energy Physics and/or Computing conferences organised via Indico will expose the student to very interesting data and workflows.

Project duration

3 months

Project area

Learning

Contact for further details

Maria Dimou

References

1. Contacts:
   1. Maria Dimou <maria.dimou@cern.ch> for project planning.
   2. Pedro Ferreira <pedro.ferreira@cern.ch> for Indico internals.
2. Indico website
3. Indico instance @ CERN
4. Indico testbed
5. Indico documentation
6. Indico functions described in short videos
7. Previous reports from usability evaluation exercises (CERN internal access only):
   1. Report about the CDA Jekyll site HERE
   2. Report about the Indico Room booking module HERE
   3. Report using card sorting for CERN Library applications HERE
   4. Older usability studies done at CERN HERE
8. Mira Buzanszky in smartrecruiters (accessibile via smartrecruiters.web.cern.ch, access restricted).

CERN group

IT-CDA

Status

Accomplished Submitted by Maria Dimou on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - 16:18.