South East Cornerstone School Division is looking for public input and feedback regarding the division's new website and its potential usability.
The school division has been building a new website since early February and wants to ensure that the public website is easy and intuitive for people to use. In order to meet those objectives, the division is asking for help from the public and other stakeholders to provide feedback in relation to the usability of the website.
Usability testing is a process which will identify areas in the website that are confusing to people or don't seem to be in the correct places. It is a validation of the design to ensure it is functional and easy to navigate. With the public's assistance and feedback, the school division can work out any issues or problems that may be identified through the testing.
"It is critical we receive as much feedback as possible from members of the public about how useable our new website is. Our website is one of our key methods in communicating with the public about who we are and what we offer. We want the new site to get that message across as efficiently as possible," explained Justin Arendt, manager of Information Systems. "By receiving input from the public, along with other important stakeholder groups, we can work out where certain areas are that may be unclear and make them easier to navigate."
Besides the public, the website development team will also be engaging current students, staff, parents, School Community Councils and the board of education and asking for their feedback.
For anyone interested in assisting with this project, the link to the feedback page can be found at www.cornerstonesd.ca. The test is roughly 10 minutes long and will require users to complete 40 to 45 tasks using five mock-up pages of the website. People will be asked to provide comments on each mock-up page by clicking on the part of the page where they think the information would be found.
The usability testing phase began on July 20 and will finish on August 3. When all the feedback has been collected, the design team will look at the results and adjust or change the website according to the feedback provided. Once all the design work has been completed, the new website is expected to be up and running by the beginning of October.
