A usability test was conducted on a mockup website for Golden Rule Rentals to evaluate users' ability to complete tasks and their satisfaction. 6 participants completed 6 tasks with a 100% success rate. They agreed it was easy to find information, track their location, and predict sections. While feedback was positive, participants felt the homepage lacked visual appeal and could be improved with more color, pictures and reorganized content. Recommendations from the test will be used to enhance the final website.

1. Mockup Usability Test for Golden Rule Rentals Website
Written by:
Brian K Baker
Kaerrick Rajotte-Carlson
11/21/16

2. Introduction
Goldenrulerentals.net is a site that is designed to market to college students in the Eau Claire
area that are looking for student housing. A usability test was conducted to determine the user’s
ability to complete certain tasks on the website. A Mockup of the proposedwebsite was created
using the site mocqus.com. Thena printout of each webpage was made and put into a binder.
This was used to allow the user to simulate browsing through the website.
Executive Summary
I conducted usability tests on Nov 20th and Nov 21st, 2016. I tested several college students and
a few people that used to be college students. The purposeof the test was to see if the users
liked the website and would recommend using it. The only problem people had with the site
seemed to be the homepage because there wasn’t a picture on it. After hearing this from the
first few users I put a picture on the homepage.
This document contains the participant feedback, satisfaction ratings, task completion rates,
ease or difficulty of completion ratings, time on task, errors, and recommendations for
improvements.

3. Methodology
Participants read the task scenarios and tried to find the information on the website.
After each task, the administrator asked the participant to rate the interface on a 5-point
Likert Scale with measures ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Post-task
scenario subjective measures included:
 How easy it was to find the information from the home page.
 Ability to keep track of their location in the website.
 Accurateness of predicting which section of the website contained the
information.
After the last task was completed, the test administrator asked the participant to rate the
website overall by using a 5-point Likert scale (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree) for
eight subjective measures including:
 Ease of use
 Frequency of use
 Difficulty to keep track of location in website
 Learn ability - how easy it would be for most users to learn to use the website
 Information facilitation – how quickly participant could find information
 Look & feel appeal – homepage’s content makes me want to explore the site
further
 Site organization
In addition, the test administrator asked the participants the following overall website
questions:
 What the participant liked most.
 What the participant liked least.
 Recommendations for improvement.

4. Participants
On Nov 20th and Nov 21st six participants took the usability test. Of the six participants, 3 were
male and 3 were female.
Evaluation Tasks/Scenarios
Test participants attempted completion of the following tasks:
 Find the login page
 Find the roommates section
 Find the Listings section
 What amenities are included in the listings section?
 Find the apply for this property button
 Find Schedule a visit button
Results
All test participants successfully completed all tasks:
Task Completion Rates
Participant Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 4 Task 5 Task 6
1 √ √ √ √ √ √
2 √ √ √ √ √ √
3 √ √ √ √ √ √
4 √ √ √ √ √ √
5 √ √ √ √ √ √
6 √ √ √ √ √ √
Success 6 6 6 6 6 6
Completion
Rates
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Task Ratings

5. After the completion of all tasks, participants rated the ease or difficult of completing the
task for three factors:
 It was easy to find my way to this information from the homepage.
 As I was searching for this information, I was able to keep track of where I was
in the website.
 I was able to accurately predict which section of the website contained this
information.
The 5-point rating scale ranged from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree). Agree ratings
are the agree and strongly agree ratings combined with a mean agreement rating of > 4.0
considered as the user agrees that the information was easy to find, that they could keep track of
their location and predict the section to find the information.
Ease in Finding Information
All Participants agreed it was easy to find information from the homepage. (mean agreement
rating = 4.83). All participants found it easy to find the login page, roommates section, and
listings section from the homepage. The average time to find these pages was about 1 sec.
Keeping Track of Location in Site
All Participants agreed it was easy to keep track of their location on the website. (mean
agreement rating = 4.83).
Predicting Information Section
All Participants agreed it was easy to predict which section of the website contains the
information they’re looking for (mean agreement rating = 5.0)

6. Time on Task
The time on task was fairly simple because people were able to find thing quite easily on the
site. The average time to find a link to another page was between 1 to 2 seconds.
Time on Task in sec
P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 Avg. TOT*
Task 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Task 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Task 3 2 1 1 2 1 1 1.3
Task 4 2 2 1 2 1 1 1.5
Task 5 2 1 1 1 2 2 1.6
Task 6 1 2 1 1 1 1 1.1
Overall Metrics
Overall Ratings
After task sessioncompletion, participants rated the site for six overall measures. These
measures include:
 Difficulty of keeping track of where they were in the site
 Ease of use

7.  Ability to predict which section of the website contains the information they are
looking for
 Homepages’ ability to make the user want to explore the site further
 User’s ability to get information quickly
 Site organization
Overall everyone liked the site. They said it was easy to use and very direct.
However, they also said that it could use a better homepage that was able to catch their eye.
Therefore, the homepage needs to be reevaluated and updated.
 Post-Task Overall Questionnaire
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree
Strongly
Agree
Mean
Rating
Percent
Agree
Thought Website
was easy to use
6 5.0 100%
Found it difficult to
keep track of
where they were in
website
6 5.0 100%
Thought most
people would learn
to use website
quickly
6 5.0 100%
Can get
information quickly
6 5.0 100%
Homepage’s
content makes me
want to explore
site
1 3 2 4.2 83%
Site’s content
would keep me
coming back
2 4 4.2 85%
Website is well
organized
2 4 4.7 100%
 *Percent Agree (%) = Agree & Strongly Agree Responses combined

8. Likes, Dislikes, Participant Recommendations
Upon completion of the tasks, participants provided feedback for what they liked most and least
about the website, and recommendations for improving the website.
Liked Most
The following comments capture what the participants liked most:
People liked that it wasn’t cluttered and gave a good description of everything they would need
to know. The listings page and the tenant application page were well liked. One person liked
the blue header format. In addition, another person thought the site was, “simple and clean”.
Liked Least
The following comments capture what the participants liked the least:
People did not like that the homepage because there wasn’t a picture on it. So, I added a scenic
picture of the walk bridge by Phoenix park. That was ok for the most part, but people still
thought it could be improved. The white background was a problem for another user. I agree,
and in the final update there will be a light blue background. In addition, there were submit
buttons missing for the scheduling a visit and tenant application page.
Recommendations for Improvement
People thought the sight could be jazzed up a little with more color and pictures. Also, on the
homepage, the manager info could be running across the bottom of the screen. While another
personthought the Golden Rule Rentals title should be easier to see. This was a good point and
will be included into the blue tab bar background.

9. Conclusion
Overall the participants I thought the sight was well organized and use it in the future. I would
like to take some more pictures of the UWEC campus and surrounding areas to use for the
homepage. Also, I received excellent feedback that will be used to improve the website.