A Usability Study on the Paeloko Website

Frequent content update on a website is a key factor to keeping users informed about an organization’s mission. Paeloko is a place-based native Hawaiian organization, providing a hands-on learning environment, through indigenous ancestral arts, culture and language at the exclusive Waihe’e land division on the island of Maui. The current website for Paeloko lacked content appeal and inconsistencies to aid potential educators.

The purpose for this usability study was to improve the ease-of-use, user satisfaction and efficiency in aiding educators on the Paeloko website (https://sites.google.com/a/hawaii.edu/paeloko2017/about). The website was built with Google Sites, an online collaborative website platform. Eight participants were included in two rounds of in-person and remote usability testing. Each session was both screen and audio recorded in order to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data through the thinking aloud process. Pre- and post-surveys collected quantitative and qualitative data, which included participant background information, demographics and website use. Additionally, average times of passed or failed task aided quantitative evaluations.

Many of the suggestions and concerns were improved upon completion of each round. Improvements included revisions to the homepage and logo, enhancing the layout, changing a resource link name, reducing white space, and creating sub-pages for specific audiences.