This was a group presentation for the course SI 622:Needs Assessment and Usability Testing, at the University of Michigan School of Information during the Winter of 2014. We conducted these interviews as part of our usability study for our client. We briefed the class on our client, methods, findings, recommendations, and takeaways from that portion of the project. .

1. Task #4 - Interviews
(Group – 12)
Fan Zhang | Hariharan Subramonyam | Jackie Wolf | Suinan Li | Uday Krishna
© CC BY 3.0 US, 2012 – Sarah Abraham

2. System and Users
EdAsssit - Tuition Assistance
Management system
(TAMS)
Clients
Businesses and their employees
in the following sector:
• Healthcare
• Defense and Aerospace
• Technology
• Insurance and Financial Services
• Energy and Utilities
• Consulting
• Manufacturing
• Education

3. Method
Structured Interviews
Recruiting
Research
Questions
Interview guide/
Logistics Interview
Interpretation,
Personas &
Scenarios
- 6 Interviews
- Stakeholder,
Internal Staff,
Current Clients,
Potential Users

4. Findings & Recommendations

5. Login
• Users don’t use this system regularly
• Login / Reset Password is not user friendly
• Not all users have organizational email ID
© CC BY 3.0 US, 2012 –Lorenzo Baldani

6. Roles and Workflow
• Different users have different roles in the
tuition reimbursement
workflow(Manager, HR, Employee)
• System is not customized to these
different roles
© CC BY 3.0 US, 2012 –Lorena Salagre

7. Documents
• Users have to upload several
documents as part of the
reimbursement process
• System takes really long to upload
documents and users have no feedback
• System Time Out
© CC BY 3.0 US, 2012 -Piotrek Chuchla

8. Tuition Advisor
• Employees can reach tuition advisors
only through the call center
• Most employees call for advice
related to Cost/ Prestige/ Method of
content delivery
• Tuition advisors have no feedback on
effectiveness of their
advice/recommendation
© CC BY 3.0 US, 2012 - Jerry Wang

9. Tuition Reimbursement Process
• Different companies have different
processes, eligibility criteria, types
of employees
• System caters to a variety of
domains and users, but the process
is the same

10. • Research Instrument – Phone
• Guinea pig effect
• Role Selection
• Lack of validity checks
Limitations

11. Key Takeaway
• Beginner’s Mindset/ Power
of not knowing
• Consider Extreme Users
• Have a ‘Backup Plan’ for
recruiting users.
© CC BY 3.0 US, 2012- Marcus Michaels