Lost in Translation: Redesigning the UT website
Perhaps you remember applying for a masters or graduate position at the UT and recall the difficulty of finding relevant information on the UT website. Even when you tried clicking on the English version you still may have encountered the feeling of `Lost in Translation'. Rich DeSantis is working to change that.
DeSantis is an American exchange student working towards a master's degree in Technical Communication at the University of Washington in Seattle, who is here on a short term project at the UT. Five years of experience in planning, studying, and delivering human communication interaction research and usability testing made him the perfect candidate for the evaluation and revision of the graduate portal of the UT. Dr. Judy Ramey, Director of the Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation at UW, suggested this project with Thea van der Geest of the Bureau of Communication at the UT when DeSantis expressed an interest in studying in Europe. Because of the long-term relation between the groups, it was relatively easy to make the necessary arrangements, and by the second week of April DeSantis found himself in the Netherlands.
He explains the project energetically, `Our aim is to make the UT website a more effective and informative tool and project the UT in the best possible way to potential masters students. As the University of Twente is planning to teach all graduate level classes in English by 2007, it is important to evaluate current content and structure of the graduate site and create additional features to make the users' experiences more satisfying and enjoyable.'
The information about the faculty members, courses offered, requirements for the application, and the application procedure are to be revised to attract more foreign master's students. `If you dig deep down most of this information is available on the website but not in a lucid manner, which makes it rather clumsy to surf around,' explains DeSantis. He is confident that it will look quite different in three months time.
There are three stages of the project: Revise, Usability, and Remote Usability. DeSantis says, `Currently the UT website is being translated by people who do not have English as their first language which can lead to an unclear presentation of the information. Making the website more informative and understandable are parts of the revision plan. After revisions, the site will be usability-tested by carefully chosen new masters
students who can more easily recall the process of exploration and application they so recently experienced. This will be followed by the second round of site revisions with a remote usability study over the internet, to evaluate and support the needs of international students looking at the UT as an opportunity.' A questionnaire will soon be ready for the users to comment on the surfing experience and to suggest the improvements they would like to see on the website.
He explains his own suitability for the position with being a native speaker and five years of experience in the field of usability research and testing. Apart from being a usability expert he also has an artistic side, playing guitar in a band called “Still Awake” at the University of Twente. He is enjoying living in Netherlands and has no complaints about the infamous Dutch weather, `It's very similar to Seattle weather.' DeSantis is overwhelmed by the liberal and tolerant Dutch society; not yet a wholesale convert to bike culture, he misses the convenience of his own car. When he returns to the United States in July, he would like to join Microsoft, where he worked as a Usability Assistant since 2004. If the opportunity arises, he would like to go into politics, which he thinks is the effective way to motivate people.
Amol Thakre |
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