Project 3: Webpage Usability and Redesign Project

Group 3: Hallee Leiner, Meredith Smith, Jack Boynton, Amelia Davis

Description of Website:
Therapediatrics is a local pediatric occupational therapy clinic in the
Wakefield, Kingston area. They work on alleged defects in children in a way that
will provide them occupational experience in the real world. Occupational, to
them, describes any aspect of work (including play) with a goal to strive for. This
not only aids children with disabilities, but also encourages learning geared
towards academics and the working world.

On their website, Therapediatrics clearly outlines all conditions and provide

descriptions of them. They also briefly explain how and why they would
counteract current behaviors and for what reasons those behaviors need to be
corrected. Their target audience is predictably parents with children who have
disabilities. Their text is academically intellectual and candidly descriptive to
provide a good picture of what parents are enrolling their children in. There are

comprehensive tests in the Links section if a parent is curious as to whether

their child is in need of such services. This system provides a user oriented
evaluation system based on the collective intuition of the parents and
demographics utilized by those at Therapediatrics. The wealth of information
allows a sense of security when trusting this organization with helping youth.
Plus, the depth allows for parents to rule out that their child will be excluded
based upon his deficiencies.
The feel of the website is supposed to give a sort of family dynamic type of
emotion. It has a group of kids with basic geometrically shaped bodies colored
red, blue, yellow, and green. The kids are all smiling and creating a generally
melancholy tone for the backdrop. This collaborates with the faded red
background to attempt a lulling feel for the intonation of their website. The hope
of the website is that parents will view it and embrace the child-like visuals as an
child-friendly organization. Then, between the educated information and childfriendly attitude, the parents will be presented with a good reason to enroll their
children into Therapediatrics.
Now that we have a feel for the target of this website, lets analyze the
effectiveness it portrays. When viewing the text, as mentioned earlier, it is
soundly written academically and geared toward the educated parent. However,
independent of a parents disposition, the majority of people in general desire text
that is easy to read and clear. Clarity in a website is intertwined with being to-thepoint. If a paragraph is not concise, it is likely to disparage a reader from
continuing. Therapediatrics has a pretty consistent abuse of description in this
way. For an example well take their paragraph:
WE SPECIALIZE IN... sensory integration therapy and neuro-sensory learning
to optimize results. We look beyond general symptoms and beyond diagnosis.
We look closely at the sensory-brain connection and how it affects your child's
learning readiness, motor functioning, acquisition of developmental milestones,
behavior, social skills, and academic performance. All learning begins with
adequate processing of sensory information. We identify sensory processing
differences and develop a program that re-educates the sensory systems and the
brain to ensure proper communication between the two. We treat the child's
whole system to improve attention, focus, listening, activity level, behavior,
movement, and learning. A neuro-sensory learning approach maximizes your
child's potential.
Now in a concise and easily readable version:

We specialize in targeting the specifics of your childs condition. Independent of

your childs disability, we believe learning begins with adequate processing of
sensory information. Through our neuro-sensory approach, we help your child
make connections formerly hidden from them while providing an environment to
maximize their potential.
All the specifics are mentioned in other places on their website. Especially on
the homepage (where this was located), it is essential to be concise to draw in
your audience.
Parents often have a desire to know what is being done to their children
when they trust another individual with their safety. Therapediatrics website
offers the type of occupational therapy they provide without going into any detail
of how they engage or utilize the practice. Looking up the practice separately is
inefficient because a reader doesnt know whether the center will use the same
techniques claimed by online sources. With such an avid description of all other
aspects on their website, Therapediatrics needs to take time to expand upon
their current listing of practices and techniques they utilize.
For most parts of this website, the feel is indeed geared towards the
parents, but when viewing the backdrop there is an immediate discrepancy.
Parents dont react with enthusiasm towards poorly drawn children with shapes
for bodies. The image is clearly very child-like and the intention is obvious,
however the picture itself subverts from the cause. Such a picture can even
suggest laziness or a lack of dedication for the cause if the parents are very
visual. As the only picture, the whole schematic, visually at least, is geared
towards children.
In the remaining background, faded red envelopes a crudely drawn
rectangle centerpiece. The centerpiece resembles a piece of notebook paper.
Now, I believe the rest of the backdrop was designed to work with their main
picture which poses the biggest mistake. The faded red does look good against
the picture, but what does that matter if the picture doesnt look good in the first
place? Plus, it is just red. There is no basic design or anything. A basic design
isnt always necessary, but when your only picture is crudely drawn children, a
cool design can help draw the eye to more of the fine detail. The links are within
a purposely sloppy notebook page wireframe on the side of the notebook paper.
There are many links and many of them could be combined for efficiency. The
sloppy notebook again plays on the child dynamic while the intended audience is
the parents. This causes an unfortunately sloppy looking design with good

information within it. The amount of links also effects how in-depth a reader will
view your sight. A lot of links typically turns them off. In the Therapediatrics site,
the payment link is not needed. It could easily be made into a disclaimer and put
anywhere on their sight. In addition, What is O.T. and What is S.I. could be put
together collectively under a link called Practices or something of that sort.
Description of Usability Testing:
In Steve Krugs, Dont Make Me Think book he dedicates an entire chapter to
Usability testing. He describes that usability testing is an effective way of
understanding how well or poorly a website operates. In his own words, Krug
states, usability tests are about watching one person at a time try to use
something...to do typical tasks so you can detect and fix things that confuse or
frustrate them. He stresses that usability testing is important because it is the
process of watching people use things, instead of listening to them.
For our project, we have chosen the website of Therapediatrics of Rhode
Island located in Wakefield, RI. In order to understand what needs to be fixed on
this website, we have conducted a usability test.
Our usability test will be performed on two people. A girl and a boy, both
college students at University of Rhode Island. We decided to use college
students because most are web savvy and we want to see if the site confuses
and frustrates web savvy people. We will ask the students to search or the
website in the search engine and then we will ask them a series of questions that
are as followed;
1. What is your first initial reaction to the sites homepage?
2. Is the homepage easy to read, or does it contain too much information?
3. Is there anything that is distracting about the homepage?
4. Go to the registration page
5. Read how to register
6. On a scale of 1-10, how easy do you find it to register?
7. Is there anything about this site that you would like to see different in order
to make it more easy to be used?
Usability Findings:
The findings from the usability test has shown that the Therapediatrics
website is distracting and contains too much content. This conclusion was drawn

from the results from the students who participated in the usability test. Both
candidates first reaction to the site were the bright colors. Their second reaction
was to the amount of content found on the home page. As they attempted to read
the content, they found themselves unable to focus because of the colors
distracting them in the background. One student even stated this site is going to
give me a headache if I keep looking at it.
Next, the students were asked to attempt to register. They found the register link
in a matter of five seconds. They both gave the ability to register a score of
seven, because it is relatively easy to do so. However, what we found was that
although it is easy to register online, it may be a waste of time. There is a
disclaimer that informs people of the waiting list to become a patient. The
students expressed concern about this stating, what's the point of registering
online if the waiting list is massive? and I would rather call and ask if theres any
chance my kid could be seen soon, and if not, I would find another place not
waste my time filling out an application to wait months.
Overall, the findings from the usability test has shown that users find the site
distracting and frustrating to look at and use. The students, [although not parents
and do not need this site] are web savvy and they struggled to say anything
positive about the content and layout of the site. We can assume from this that if
a parent who was not web savvy looked to this site for information, they too
would struggle with the site. The test results ultimately have proven that the sites
colors are attempting to be childlike, and the content is an overload of information
that is difficult to read due to its size, font and layout. A distracting site is a poorly
designed site and does not perform the way the site is intended too.
Conclusions:
After evaluating the Therapediatrics wesbite by analyzing its content and
conducting a usability test, we have been able to draw out the sites strengths and
weaknesses. The only strength that we found was the registration page. From
our usability test findings, we have concluded that the process of registering
online is simple and easy to locate and complete. However, a drawback to that is
the disclaimer of the waiting list. Although registering is simple, it in fact is
registering to be part of the waiting list that is already huge. This poses a threat
to the site because if one sees how long the waiting list is, they may consider
registering to be a waste of their time, thus resulting in finding another office.
Overall, we have found more weaknesses than strengths about this site. The
biggest weaknesses being the colors, the organization of content and information

and the layout. These weaknesses pose a huge threat to the site because it
causes distraction and user frustration. This in the end will lose site viewers and
could possibly lose potential customers/patients. This site could be targeted
towards the parents, not the children because it is the parents who will decide if
this office is the right one to send their child to. The use of bright colors and
childlike drawings is the furthest thing from targeting a parent. This is one of the
biggest threats to this site because if a parent is turned off from something so
simple as the background colors, then site is failing to gain new patients which
will hurt the business in the long run. The second biggest threat is organization of
the content. This site has a massive amount of content on almost every single
page. Although this could be argued as a strength, based on our usability test
findings, it is more of a weakness. The overload of information on every page
only adds to the distraction factor of the bright colors. This is a threat to the site
because when there is too much content, the user can easily lose interest in
reading the information. A website should provide enough information for the
user to gain an understanding, but not too much where the user gives up on
attempting to understand. This is exactly what this website does and it is a huge
threat to the overall usability and function of the website. The last weakness we
found was the layout of the site. Unfortunately, if a sites layout is poor then the
website itself suffers. Although the layout is simple, it is too simple and does not
have any strategic organization to it. The sites layout is the cherry on top of the
weak sundae of bright colors and over load of content.
Recommendations:
Immediately, our group wanted to change the background and layout. The
color of the original website set us off. Red, as a rule, is not defined as a
soothing color. Even maroon is not something that makes a parent feel like this
establishment will be a safe haven for their child, which is how a patient should
feel in a therapy office. So we wanted to fix that primarily and give the website a
calming presence it was so lacking with the passionate red. Blues, greens, tans,
these colors are considered soothing and harmonic. Soft colors like pastels and
cool tones. So we found a color palette that consisted of pinks, blues, and tans.
We think this will let the viewer know immediately that this is a safe place for their
child. We knew that we wanted the darkest color in our palette, the dark grey, to
be our navigation bar and the top color, the light blue, to be our header. The rest
of the discussion mainly centered around what to use as the outline, font color,
and background, but eventually we found that the last color, the light tan, would

be used best for the font color because it will look the nicest atop the other
colors. From there, we decided between the two pink shades as the outline and
background. Also, we had to get rid of the badly drawn geometry children,
because they were creepy. Parents are the target audience and a parent will not
be endeared by the creepy children.
Another thing we wanted to change was the layout. As it is, the website is
crowded and unorganized with too much text and not enough direction. We
wanted a simpler header and easy to understand tabs. So if a parent needed to
look up what they did with their children, it would be there, right underneath the
main header, easy to find, done. We also badly wanted to add a picture, any
picture. A real picture of a child, not some strange smiling child. Who is this
child? How can I trust you? We wanted a picture of the building, maybe a
picture of the staff to make it more personal. For a therapy office, something that
is so intimate by nature, the websites layout is strongly lacking in interpersonal
relationships. Parents should feel compelled to bring their child to this business
because they will be safe, they will be comforted, and they will belong. The
website as it is feels too cold for someone to bring their troubled child.
As our student testers soon discovered, everything about the site distracts
you from the content. Too, too much content. So this reveals two problems that
need to be amended. One is that the sites colors and pictures should never
distract you from the words, because the words are the backbone of the
business. The rest is just fluff to compliment the content. Another problem is
that too much content instantly makes people not want to read it. Its not that we
hate reading, but we could find another site with bulleted, easy to read capsules
in a few seconds with google. Therapediatrics is shooting themselves in the foot
by making people not able to read the content with the distractions and not want
to read the content by its sheer size.
Another problem is the registration page. We think that this page should only
allow new patients to apply if they have slots open. Otherwise, you go through
the process of signing up, only to be told theres a waiting list. Its just as easy to
find another site and sign the child up there. They should also add a preregistration application that allows a parent to be added to the waiting list. It
would just make the process easier on the parent, who may or may not be tech
savvy.

Typecard:

Wireframes and Comprehensive Layouts: