Results of usability tests conducted on SunBasket's website.

1. Elicia Reuscher
Jacquie Lamer
Intro to Web Publishing
22 October 2018
Usability Test for SunBasket.com
Test Preparation
In order to prepare to conduct usability tests for SunBasket.com, I made sure to go
through each of the four tasks myself. Since I had already been through the site for my previous
paper on popularity and traffic, the tasks were very easy to accomplish. To start, I was given a
scenario where a rich uncle would be providing me with sixty-five dollars to pay for weekly
meal kits from SunBasket. The first task was then, to figure out whether this amount of money
would be enough for weekly meal kits. To complete this task, I went to the “Pricing” tab of
SunBasket’s website, and was clearly able to identify the weekly costs for meal kits. I was able
to recognize that a rich uncle giving me sixty-five dollars would not be enough money. This is
because I calculated three recipes per week multiplied by two servings each meal equals six
servings per week. The cost of each serving is $11.99, so six times 11.99 is $71.94. Thus,
showing not enough money would be provided.
For the next task, I went through the process of building an order by clicking “Order
Now” under the menu options. After, I signed up for an account using Facebook, and then chose
three different meal options. This led me to task three, which was determining the shipping cost
of this order and subsequent orders. I learned that shipping is free for the first order. For all
orders following, I had to read the small gray text under the “Place My Order” to learn that the

2. next order would be a total of $82.78 including shipping. This means that shipping would cost
$10.84. Lastly, I was asked to determine how to place an order to accommodate a serious food
allergy. In order to complete this last task, I went to the “Meal Plans” tab and scrolled down the
page to the “Frequently Asked Questions” section. In this section, I was able to find a question
that asked “What if I have food allergies or intolerances?” which explained that anybody with
serious food allergies should not order from SunBasket. Overall, going through the four tasks of
the usability test provided me with adequate preparation to conduct the tests.
Choosing Participants
Tester 1: Diana Linville
The first tester is Diana Linville. This tester is in her early forties, a Senior Instructor of
Computer Science at Northwest Missouri State University, and cooks for a family of four. Most
of her days are spent teaching college student and working on curriculum. I chose Diana as a
tester because I know that she cooks for her family, which is an important part when choosing a
tester because being familiar with ingredients or recipes in general is something needed for the
SunBasket site. Also, Diana does not use meal kit sites, which means she is unfamiliar with
SunBasket and not able to do the test quickly or easily. Lastly, there is a significant age variance
between Diana and I that I would be able to learn how somebody different goes about dealing
with the tasks. During the course of the test, I also learned Diana’s internet usage habits. This
included spending fifty hours a week on the internet. Furthermore, ninety percent of that time
was spent browsing and ten percent was spent on social media. Lastly, Diana categorized herself
as a high experience user of the internet.
Environment for Tester 1

3.  Location of test: The location of the test was in Diana Linville’s office. This is
because Diana does a lot of her browsing in the office and is most comfortable
with the computer and surroundings.
 Physical environment: The physical environment consisted of bright lighting
and the door to the office was closed. Some distractions that were included during
the course of the test was her cell phone, Outlook being open, which produced
notifications, and eleven other tabs open.
 Technical environment: As for the technical environment, Diana had a PC with
double screens. An Ethernet cable powered the internet connection. During the
test, Diana used Google Chrome as the default browser and had about four
browser plug-ins. To conclude, all of Diana’s icons were small and did not get in
the way of the site.
Tester 2: Meghan Jackson
The second tester I chose was Meghan Jackson. This woman is in her early twenties and
is a college student who majors in elementary education, and lives in an apartment off campus
where she cooks daily. Meghan spends most of her days going to classes, studying, and
completing extracurricular activities. Meghan is also a good candidate for being a tester for
SunBasket’s website because, like Linville, she is familiar with cooking and how recipes work in
general. Secondly, Meghan is also not familiar with any meal kit site, therefore being able to
perform the tasks without knowing everything already. Some other good things to note are
Meghan’s internet usage. According to her, she spends seventy hours per week on the internet.
Out of all that time, eighty percent is spent on social media and twenty percent is used browsing
the internet. Finally, Meghan considered herself a high experience user of the internet. All in all,

4. Meghan is a good candidate because she is very different from Diana by age, lifestyles, and
internet usage habits. Another thing that sets these two apart is Diana Linville teaches web
development and computer science, thus understanding website guidelines, but Meghan Jackson
is often becoming an expert on elementary education, which does not include using the web
often. These differences are a key part of usability tests because it can exhibit common issues in
websites between significantly different users.
Environment for Tester 2
 Location of test: The test was conducted in Meghan’s apartment on her couch.
The test was conducted there because it is where she is most comfortable and does
most of web shopping.
 Physical environment: The physical environment included lower lighting than in
Linville’s office, but nothing that took away from the usability test. The only
distractions that were included during the tests were her phone, Outlook
notifications, and three other tabs open.
 Technical environment: The test was conducted on her laptop. The laptop was a
PC and from Northwest Missouri State University. The connection type was
through Wi-Fi provided by Sudden Link. Lastly, the size of the icons were small
and not a bother for the website and there were no browser plug-ins.
Test Results
Initial Site Thoughts
When beginning the usability test, both testers were asked to explain their initial
thoughts of SunBasket. Starting off, each tester mentioned the vibrancy of the site and

5. how visually appealing it was. Diana mentioned how clean the lines were and Meghan
mentioned how nice the font type was. Another similar initial thought the testers
mentioned was how healthy the whole website looked. The second tester, Meghan,
mentioned the site looked “too healthy”. Some key differences between the two testers
was Diana Linville focused on the information and organization of the site, while
Meghan Jackson fixated on the visuals, especially the images. For example, Diana
commented on the button text and what the excerpts summarized. Meghan, on the other
hand, observed how happy people looked in pictures and did not understand why there
was a child tending to a garden. Overall, there was a very positive review of the home
page from both testers.
Task 1: Determine the weekly cost of a meal plan that appeals to you. Will your uncle’s
budget cover the cost of your preferred meal plan?
Tester 1
(Diana Linville)
Tester 2
(Meghan Jackson)
Average
Average
Satisfaction
3 4 3.5
Success Rate 100% 100% 100%
Highlights
1. One main problem that tester 1 encountered was having to calculate the average
cost per week in her head rather than the weekly price being openly available.
Tester 2 did not have this problem because she went straight to building her order
for the cost instead of the “Pricing” page, so the weekly cost was calculated for
her.

6. 2. Another small problem tester two encountered, was not being able to see pricing
on the “Meal Plans” page. When I introduced the first task, Meghan quickly went
to the “Meal Plans” pages, and instead of making prices available on that page she
had to build her entire order.
3. A common problem both testers had when trying to figure out pricing was the
serving sizes. Tester 1 explained there were not many choices. Tester 2
complained that there was not an option for one person and one serving size.
Biggest Problem
The biggest problem with task one was having the testers do the calculations
themselves for weekly cost instead of having it openly available. When tester 1
encountered this task, she went directly to the “Pricing” tab to figure out the weekly
costs. When she was on the page the only information she was given was the “Recipes
per week”, “Servings per recipe”, and “Price per serving”. This meant that in order to get
the total weekly cost, tester 1 had to multiply the number of recipes by the number of
servings by the price per serving. Once doing this, she calculated it being around forty-
four dollars, however in the second task learned this total was not correct, and it actually
totaled $175.84. Therefore, not doing the math correctly in her head led to a significantly
different cost for the first week. One thing to mention is the second tester did not
encounter this problem because in task 1 she actually built out her whole order instead of
going to the pricing page. However, later on when she visited the “Pricing” page, I
noticed a remarkable difference from tester’s 1 experience to tester’s 2 experience, which
were a week apart. Tester 2 had the total price of the first box for one week available to
her. So, using an online tool to look at previous versions of websites called Wayback

7. Machine, I was able to look at the website from a week ago. As you can see below, the
picture on the left shows tester 1’s experience, while the picture on the right depicts
tester’s 2 experience.
As you can see, SunBasket made the weekly prices available for my second
tester’s experience, but not for the first tester. However, this still was the biggest problem
for task one on the usability test because of how confused tester 1 was when her total was
over one hundred dollars.
Alignment to Heuristic: Recognition rather than recall
The heuristic: recognition rather than recall, fits this task and its biggest problem
perfectly. This heuristic is a guideline for interfaces to make information easily
retrievable and to stray away from making users think or use their brains too much. Task
one required users to figure out weekly costs of a meal kit, which was not easily
retrievable and made the user think way too hard. As mentioned above, tester 1 was

8. forced to do calculations in her head in order to complete the task. However, when
SunBasket kept the heuristic, recognition rather than recall, in mind they made weekly
cost easily retrievable for the second tester.
Task 2: Go through the process of building an order (customizing a meal plan) and
choose the specific meals you’d like to receive.
Tester 1
(Diana Linville)
Tester 2
(Meghan Jackson)
Average
Average
Satisfaction
4 4 4
Success Rate 100% 100% 100%
Highlights
1. The first problem both testers encountered was when signing up for an account to
build their order. Each tester was not sure if they were required to put in all
contact information or just some. This made them believe all information was
required.
2. Another common problem the testers had was the selections were not varied
enough to pick from. They often were picking meals they would not actually eat
or did not understand all of the ingredients or recipe jargon.
3. Lastly, when choosing different meals, tester 2 could not figure out how to select
the meal until reading that she must click on the check mark.
Biggest Problem

9. The biggest problem that both testers came across were the inability to choose
meals that they actually liked and understood. Earlier, I mentioned both of the testers are
people who cooked almost daily, however when scrolling through SunBasket’s meal
choices, I often heard comments like “What is that?” or “I have never heard of that”.
Tester 1, who cooks for a family of four, mentioned her kids would never eat any of the
options available. Both testers, once choosing the three meal options for the week, stuck
with meals more widely known. These meals included meatballs, sausage with
vegetables, Chicken, and pasta with vegetables. With over eighteen meals to choose
from, each tester was displeased with the variety and overall misunderstanding of the
recipe jargon, which caused the biggest problem for this task.
Alignment to Heuristic: Match between system and the real world
The website principle of matching between system and the real world aligns with
task two and its biggest issue. This is because websites being able to use language or
phrases that are universally understood plays a huge part on whether or not users are
going to like to use your website. As for SunBasket, each tester had a hard time
understanding all of the recipes. The testers also felt that the recipes were not aligned
with common meals that most people eat. Thus, SunBasket’s system did not completely
match with the real world, and discouraged users when picking meals.
Task 3: Determine the cost of shipping your first order and all subsequent orders.
Tester 1
(Diana Linville)
Tester 2
(Meghan Jackson)
Average
Average
Satisfaction
3 0 2
Success Rate 100% 50% 75%

10. Highlight
1. A common problem each tester had with this task was having to calculate in their
head the cost of shipping for subsequent orders. This is because SunBasket gives
the total price of the next order with shipping instead of just shipping prices.
2. A problem the second tester had was not being able to find the shipping prices for
subsequent orders. The tester thought it might be on another page, so she went
back to the “Pricing” and “Meal Plans” pages. However, later realized that the
shipping was in small gray text below her order cost.
3. The last problem with this task was that SunBasket first gave the impression that
all shipping was free. So, both testers thought subsequent orders were free but
later after looking through the site realized they were not.
Biggest Problem
As for the third task, the biggest problem that arose was not being able to find the
cost of shipping for subsequent orders. Tester 2 dealt with this problem and ended up
with a fifty percent success rate because she was never able to find the cost of shipping
for orders after the first one. To find the cost of shipping for her first order she looked on
the “Order Summary” section of the “Pay” page. However, when asked to find the price
of shipping for orders after that she directed herself back to the “Home” page and then
clicked on the “Pricing” tab, where she quickly browsed the “Frequently Asked
Questions” section. There she was not able to find the cost of shipping at all. After, she
scrolled to the footer, clicked on the “Values” link, and scrolled through page, only to

11. find nothing about shipping. Her last step was clicking on the “Meal Plans” tab in the
main navigation, where again she scrolled through and found nothing about shipping.
Tester 2 being very frustrated gave up and said she could not find the answer. On the
other hand, tester 1 did not encounter this problem because she chose to the read the
disclaimer on the “Order Summary” section that explained the next order’s total
including shipping, which would be about ten dollars more. As mentioned in the initial
thoughts section, tester 2 seemed to be a visual learner and strayed away from reading
lots of text, while tester 1 read the information. Thus, for task three SunBasket’s biggest
problem was not clearly depicting the price of shipping, especially for those who are
more visual and do not pay attention to small disclaimers.
Alignment to Heuristic: Help and Documentation
Help and documentation can be a heuristic SunBasket should pay attention to
because even though it is good to keep websites minimal sometimes users need more help
or information on the product. In terms of task three, determining shipping costs is very
important to users and not being able to find that can be very frustrating. Thus, being able
to provide documentation on the shipping processes as a whole would benefit the user on
not only learning about the costs, but also answering questions as to how the ingredients
are shipped. Therefore, if SunBasket had utilized this heuristic, tester 2 would have not
felt so frustrated on trying to figure out simple information.
Task 4: Assume you have a very serious food allergy. Determine how to go about
placing an order that accommodates that allergy.
Tester 1
(Diana Linville)
Tester 2
(Meghan Jackson)
Average

12. Average
Satisfaction
4 2 2
Success Rate 100% 50% 75%
Highlight
1. The first problem that most stood out to each tester was that the “Meal Plan” page
did not acquire a list of ingredients for users to look through.
2. Next, the testers were both unsure where to go after looking and clicking through
the “Meal Plan” page.
3. Lastly, both testers did not like the amount of time it took to find the disclaimer
that explained people with food allergies should not buy from SunBasket.
Biggest Problem
For task four, it is clear that the biggest problem was not being able to quickly
find how to accommodate a food allergy. Both testers at least clicked on three different
pages to complete this task. The first tester went back to the “Home” page of SunBasket,
but found nothing on food allergies. Then she clicks on “Meal Plans” in the main
navigation. As she is scrolling through the page she is super confused as to why she is not
able to find food allergy information when it is very important. Next, she clicks on
“Gluten-Free” diets scrolls through and still is not able to find anything on allergies.
Tester 1 then returns to the “Meal Plans” page scrolls through and reads the “Frequently
Asked Questions” section. There, she is able to find out that people with food allergies
should not order from SunBasket. Now, as for tester 2, she had a much harder time
figuring this out and could not give me a complete answer. The first thing tester 2 did was

13. click on “Meal Plans” and the proceeded to click on “Vegan”, where she expected to
view an ingredient list but instead was given summaries of the diet. She then went back
to “Meal Plans” and clicked on the “Gluten-Free” diet, where again there was not an
ingredient list. She again headed back to the “Meal Plans” page and commented that a
person with an allergy should choose a meal plan that did not contain their food allergy.
Tester 2 continued to scroll through the “Meal Plans” page and then read a disclaimer at
the bottom that explained food might become cross contaminated. So, tester 2 concluded
that a person with food allergies should not order from SunBasket. Overall, it is clear that
each tester took many steps in order to find very important information that is ultimately
life threatening.
Alignment to Heuristic: Flexibility and Efficiency of use
The heuristic that aligns with task 4 and its biggest problem is flexibility and
efficiency of use. This guideline is described as anticipating user needs and adding
features to your site that will not only speed up the process of an advanced user, but
allows visibility to highly needed information. Since SunBasket is a meal kit site and
specifically deals with preparing ingredients for people to eat, it is highly important to
let the user know what should happen if they have a food allergy. This is a highly
anticipated user need, so using this heuristic; SunBasket should make it more
apparent to advanced or inexperienced users to not order from SunBasket if they have
a food allergy.
Final Site Thoughts

14. After completing the four tasks, each tester was asked to reveal their final thoughts of
SunBasket. One thing both testers agreed on was there was not a lot of variety for meals and the
options were too healthy. Conversely, the testers had very different reactions at the end of their
test. Tester 1 found that SunBasket was very user friendly and did not acquire anything that was
too frustrating. On the other hand, tester 2 commented that she would not order from SunBasket
at all. She found that SunBasket not offering an ingredient list for the meals was very frustrating.
Overall, tester 2 did not find SunBasket user friendly since she was not able to fully complete
two tasks. Therefore, the two different experiences from each tester definitely portrayed how
different a user’s reviews can be from each other.
Recommendations to improve user
experience
Single problem being fixed:
Task 4: Users not being able to quickly find
what to do about serious food allergies.
Problem Improvement:
For this problem, an easy fix for
SunBasket would be adding icons of what
common food are in the meals that are a
common food allergy. Not only would this
give visual people an easy way to figure out whether a food allergy would be accommodated, it
would also be easier to find, rather than a small disclaimer on the bottom of a page. As you can
see in the above screenshot of SunBasket’s site, there is nothing mentioning food allergies in any

15. of the meals. However, an easy fix for this
would be the second screenshot. This
screenshot adds in icons that are clearly
related to food allergies. The new and
improved screenshot even has a key at the
top of the screen that shows that the icons
mean the meals contain those ingredients.
This automatically improves the site’s user
experience and pleases those with serious
food allergies, who could have ended up in
a life or death situation.