Working Title: Floral Design Concepts - Alpha Test
Report Author: Ladan Moshiri
Date: 04/18/2010

Brief Profile of Users:
Three users were selected for the test. One of the users was a business owner, who had a floral design certificate, and had done floral design as a hobby for many years. The second user was an educator who had a degree in graphics design and was chosen for her artistic abilities but had no prior knowledge of floral design. The third user was a freshman college student who had limited knowledge of floral design, but was chosen for her strengths in English language. 

Think Aloud Task:
Each user was asked to locate information to answer the following five questions:
1.    Where can you find the steps to make a Vertical floral arrangement?
2.    Where can you find the psychological effects of warm colors?
3.    Can you list the basic tools needed for making flower arrangements?
4.    What kind of container works best when making Round floral arrangements?
5.    What is Visual Balance in floral design?

Summary of Think Aloud:
All of the test users quickly located information about making the Vertical arrangements (question 1), type of container used for Round flower arrangements (question 4), the basic floral design tools (question 3), and locating the description of Visual Balance. Two out of three users where able to answer question 3 quickly, but the third user went to the “Balance” page instead of  the “Color” page to find the answer, assuming that the psychological effects were related to the Balance characteristic of the floral design.

Summary of Post-test Interview:

• One of the test users suggested changing the color of the title which was originally a combination of green and orange to just one color. She also suggested changing the white background of the middle section to light green or yellow.
• Another user suggested changing the section titles to bold yellow color to make these sections stand out.
• All of the test users suggested making the title “Floral Design Concepts” on the top left corner of the page bigger.
• All users also suggested adding links to each separate page which were directly related to the topic of that specific page.

Findings to be Implemented:
·      Adding links relevant to the topic of each page.
·      Changing the color of section titles to bold yellow to make them stand out.
·      Changing the color of each title to a bold dark green, rather than every word in the title be either green or orange.

Findings that will not be Implemented:
·      Changing the background color of the middle section from white to light green or yellow. (This will make the site look too “busy”.)
·      Increasing the size of the title of the page “Floral Design Concepts” in the top left corner of the page.  Efforts were made to accomplish this task, but because the title of the page was part of a very small image which was embedded in the design framework, the pre-defined size of the image simply did not allow enough room for larger letters.