Maddy DeRose's Evaluation Report
Participants
My first evaluator was my friend Kendra Holaday. She is a student here at Mizzou studying Hospitality Management, specifically conference & events. She was one of the five girls that I interviewed when I began the process of creating my website. Since her focus is conference & events, she works a lot with different event websites, and by now, she has a keen eye of well-developed websites. I asked her to review the design and content of my website. She reviewed my website on an Apple MacBook Pro using safari connected to on-campus Wi-Fi.
My second evaluator was my friend Jill Murray. She is also a student here at Mizzou studying the same as Kendra and she was also one of the five girls that I interviewed when I began the process of creating my website. Jill is currently the webmaster of Mizzou Special Events Society and has experience working with HTML, so she is qualified to give me great feedback. I have asked her to review and critique the design and content of my website. She was using an Apple 13 in. MacBook Pro iOS surfing on safari with Mizzou Tiger Wi-Fi.
My third evaluator was my mom. She is a Speech Pathologist at an elementary school and manages two condos at the Lake of the Ozarks with her free time. She is qualified to review my website because she actually just created her very own website a few months ago. She has experience with design and content in order to get people to visit her website, so her feedback is greatly appreciated. She reviewed my website on an MacBook Air using safari browser with wireless internet connection from home.
Summary of Evaluators' Comments
| Category | Average Score from Evaluators |
|---|---|
| Design | 4.78 |
| Content | 4.54 |
| Credibility | 4.67 |
Overall, my evaluators agreed that the navigation was easy and intuitive with easy to locate each tab. They also thought that my text was easy to read and contrasts nicely with the light yellow background and logo. They also seemed to enjoy the content that was provided on the "Things to do" page and believed that it gave accurate informative information on what to do.
There seemed to be a common issue when my evaluators were viewing my site. Both my mom and Jill said they did not see an e-mail address included, however, Kendra did. I believe this is because they were unware that you can click my name (which is blue and underlined) and it directly takes you to e-mail me. Another comment made among all three evaluators was the spacing between my tabs at the top. All agreed to make the links of the tabs a little bigger and space them out to make a clearer separation.
Kendra really liked the dark text on the light background. She thought it was easy to read and it really pops. Kendra suggested to add space between the wording and the images on the "about the author" to make it look cleaner. Overall, she said she would use my website as a reference for the lake and entertainment, which is my main goal!
Jill mentioned that in the white spaces on the side, it would look cool to have that coral color to pull the colors in more. However, I don't believe that can be achieved. She also thought that my photos relate to what the text was describing it as and they were insightful. Jill also said she would be interested in viewing my site when visiting the Ozarks for a vacation or weekend.
My mom liked my homepage overall, but suggested to add more text for the Welcome and About the Author section. She especially liked the links provided with each activity that directly takes the viewer to find more information about the various activities. Since the State Park didn't have any links to it, she suggested to add some links in terms of hiking trails, bike trails and beach access at the lake.
Evaluator Data
Below, are the 3 links to my evaluators' data files:
Kendra Holaday Jill Murray Sharen DeRoseRecommended/Planned Changes
Based on the recommendations I've received, I plan on making these changes:
Navigation and Design- Navigation spacing: All three evaluators recommended spacing in the navigation. My first change that I will make is the spacing of the tabs. I will make the font bigger so it is readable and I will separate them to make it look cleaner. Also, I would like to add a vertical line between the tabs because I think it looks more professional.
- Changing fonts: I also plan on changing the font of the text because it is a bit boring to read. I will also play around with the colors to make my site more aesthetically pleasing.
- Adding links: My mom would like to see links of hiking trails, bike trails, and beach access under the State Park image. This will be useful for visitors to know where to go if they would like to do those activities.
- More content: I will, of course, add more content on the other tabs I currently have on my site. This will be adding restaurants and bars along with multimedia to compliment it, different options for accommodations and as well events going on around the area.
- More information: My mom recommends adding more text for the Welcome and About the Author section to make it a little more interesting and to also add information about Lake of the Ozarks on the home page. By adding more information in these areas will boost my credibility on my knowledge of the lake.
- Contact information: Jill and my mom had a hard time finding my e-mail address. So I will make that clear in the footer of each page on my website. This will cause less confusion if anyone needs to contact me.
Reflections on Evaluation Process
This evaluation process was extremely helpful for me. I was glad that my evaluators gave honest opinions and not 5's straight across the board. If they did so, they would have not been effective participants because then I wouldn't know what to improve upon. It was also useful because my three participants have at least some background with HTML or website critique, so they were able to guide me in the right direction to help me improve my website.
Through this evaluation process, I learned that 6 eyes are better than your own 2. I also learned that it is extremely important to let others view your site as you go along in the process of constructing it. They might suggest something that you may have never thought of. Having evaluators share their thoughts and opinions on what needs to be improved upon can lead to a more tasteful website. Their thoughts and opinions are important because in the end, it's not just you using the website, and you have to think about what the end users would want to see. One suggestion, however, is to have my evaluators review my site after the completion of all working tabs. That way, they can see the website as a final product, and give suggestions on the overall site as a whole.
