Interview #1- Bobby

Bobby: age-24, from Cleveland, OH; currently a Ph D student in the OSU School of Communication; main focus of research is video games

Do you use the internet? What do you use the internet for?

Yes. Everything, information, socializing, shopping, entertainment,

On a daily basis, what is your internet use like?

Always on it; check email every 5 minutes;  email facebook, soccer stuff; shopping; amazon

What are your favorite websites?

Facebook; amazon; npr

Have you ever heard of green tea? Have you ever tried it? Do you like it?

Yes; yes but not in a long time; yeah

Do you know the nutritional benefits of green tea?

Yes… just relax you? Antioxidants?

Do you drink green tea? How often?

I don’t drink it that much… If I did it would be motivated by the health benefis

To what extent would you consider yourself focused on healthy eating/drinking or a healthy lifestyle?

No not that much

What are a few of the things you try to do as a part of your regular routine to stay healthy?

Play basketball once a week; eat fruit every morning; try to drink milk and eat spinach even though I don’t like it

Does anything ever get in the way of you doing those healthy things? What are the barriers to your healthy lifestyle goals?

Graduate school; timing; I would eat healthier if I could schedule meals if you could cook; bringing lunch and dinner to work a lot hurts; microwave meals

Have you ever heard of eating the green tea leaves?

No

Did you know the nutritional benefits of drinking green tea?

No “that’s interesting ” “eat green tea; that’s funny sounds llike eat beer or drink bread”

What would I need to do to get you to eat green tea leaves once or regularly?

Tell me where to go to buy it “you’ve already told me the benefits”

What do you think about the site?

Went straight to FAQ’s

Looks like a good website; got what I’ looking for at the top; about us; why; has a video I’d probably watch; I like the video being right there; the green tea benefits is very good; a lot of little tabs on the left side, a lot of information

Is this website giving you enough information?

Eat green tea doesn’t sound like a brand but it’s clear he’s selling the product, but I’d like to see all the places he could buy it; it kinda works with what I was teaching in persuasion- comparison- two sided messages; not just one message; 

Interview Script

Interview Script:

Do you use the internet? What do you use the internet for?

On a daily basis, what is your internet use like?

What are your favorite websites?

Have you ever heard of green tea? Have you ever tried it? Do you like it?

Do you know the nutritional benefits of green tea?

Do you drink green tea? How often?

To what extent would you consider yourself focused on healthy eating/drinking or a healthy lifestyle?

What are a few of the things you try to do as a part of your regular routine to stay healthy?

Does anything ever get in the way of you doing those healthy things? What are the barriers to your healthy lifestyle goals?

Have you ever heard of eating the green tea leaves?

Did you know the nutritional benefits of drinking green tea?

What would I need to do to get you to eat green tea leaves once or regularly?

What do you think about the site?

Is this website giving you enough information?

Persona #2

Chelsea MacLeish, 26

Single

Chelsea used to swim at West Virginia University and now lives in a large Mid-Atlantic city. She works for ING as a representative for the identify theft and consumer security department.  She works 5 days a week for 8 hours each day.

Chelsea goes to advanced yoga classes 3 times a week and exercises on her own regularly. She is single with no children.

She is a vegetarian and prefers to eat only organic food. This in mind, Chelsea knows she has to make sure she gets the proper vitamins in her diet. She is always interested in new ways to make healthy choices. Chelsea is a fan of all-natural health enhancing treatments. Although Sarah prefers to strive for a preservative free, vitamin rich and overall natural lifestyle, she enjoys socializing with her friends regularly at bars and concerts. She drinks a lot of green tea and coffee- especially when she had been out late the night before. 

Chelsea does most of her shopping online, spends much of her time on facebook and owns an IPhone which she uses constantly to stay up with her friends. 

Persona #1

Jack Ricker, 48

Married

            Jack is a rehabilitation physician with 6 kids. Jack has always been active and engaged in sports his whole life.  He played sports in high school, college and regularly exercised through medical school.  Lately, Jack has been trying to watch his cholesterol and monitor other aspects of his health because of the history of heart disease in his family. He is very busy because his children are involved in many school clubs, sports teams and other extra-curricular activities in all age groups. Jack likes to try new things that are good for his heart and general health. He drinks a glass of red wine a night and likes to pick up novel health foods in addition to his wife's trips to the grocery stores for the family. Jack works 5 days a week seeing patients and has dinner at home every night with his family-unless there is a baseball game or band recital.

He tries to workout every day, to eat a heart healthy diet, and take aspirin to reduce his chance of heart attack. Jack’s wife cooks most of the meals. He tried to drink green tea because he knows it is good for him. He doesn’t like the way it tastes. Most of the time, Jack is running out the door and doesn’t have time to drink or prepare to take with him a cup of hot tea. 

Competitor Analysis -- "Eat Green Tea.com" vs. "Pork Be Inspired"

The website we chose to do competitor analyze is “Pork Be Inspired” (URL: http://www.porkbeinspired.com/Index.aspx). When user first opens the site, a sort of dark, wood color background with some deep blue page tag pops up in front, which makes user feel comfortable and modest. Upon arrival the user would like to follow and trust the ideas and inspirations the site intend to portray. By comparison, the site “Eat Green Tea.com” (URL: http://www.eatgreentea.com) is presented in a sort of bright refreshing color, it does make user feel environment-friendly and healthy, yet with the combination of bright white color background and white title, it makes the site “Eat Green Tea.com” lack of credibility. It is over-conspicuous, to some degree. At the same time, users will expect “Pork Be Inspired” website to give them steady and valuable suggestions, and change their way of life in to healthy style; yet they would possibly think that “Eat Green Tea.com” could give them some fancy and modern ideas but not really practical in life, by another word, not the real life style.

Secondly, both of the two sites offer introduction and promotion videos to the site visitor. Unlike “Eat Green Tea.com”, which simply link you to the YouTube video, site “Pork Be Inspired” designed a more professional and user-friendly video system for visitors. “Pork Be Inspired” integrates the video with its own website, offers a multiple video choices for users on its right column for the convenience of browse. And except for the same features as timeframe bar, play button, sound control button and full-screen button as “Eat Green Tea.com” has, site “Pork Be Inspired” video system also contains an “email to friend” function, a “get link (of the video)” function and a multifunctional MENU feature button, which is more convenient and user-centered to all visitors. What more attracting and helpful is that site “Pork Be Inspired” provides an introduction and short comment of each video, placed right under the corresponding video, so that all the visitors can foresee what the content will be. This is a great consideration of what users expect. In the site of “Pork Be Inspired”, you wouldn’t feel that the web designer is simply plug-in different gadgets to finish this webpage, rather than, they are designing the webpage with their heart and with their users in mind, and all of this certainly makes you feel that you are in a professional, scientific and carefully-treated environment rather than a common commercial website.

Thirdly, there is another interesting feature of the competitor site “Pork Be Inspired” which the site “Eat Green Tea.com” does not have. “Pork Be Inspired” possesses a beautiful collection of healthy pork-related and recipe pictures, and they rolls over by one after another all the time. This feature attracts users very much, and gives them a direct impression of what kind of good quality and healthy ideas they are trying to portray to them.

From “Pork Be Inspired”, users can expect to have different kinds of healthy recipes, cuts information and cooking methods, nutritional information, and healthy advice and so on. The site “Eat Green Tea.com” has similar user expectations as well. Moreover, “Eat Green Tea.com” has more sections on scientific information about green tea, as well as a customer-oriented FAQ section. Lastly, users can expect the site “Eat Green Tea.com” to have section about “Buy Edible Green Tea” for commerce purposes, which “Pork Be Inspired” does not contain.

Eat Green Tea - Heuristics Review

Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

- There is no indicator in the upper nav tabs to show which section tab you are on.  Differing color/shading or some sort of "this is selected" indicator would benefit the user in knowing where they are in the site structure. SEV:Med

-"this is selected" indicators would be helpful in the Benefits sections left nav bar.  Also, the "sub-articles" would be more connected to their category header if the left bar functioned in an accordion style menu, that when the category is selected the it woud "open" to revel the articles for the category.  Currently, when selected the articles list appears at the bottom, thus a jointed relationship between the two.  SEV:Med

Match between system and the real world

The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

-footnotes on bottom of benefits provide http address of sources/references, but those links are not hyperlinked - should be hyperlinked.  SEV:High

User control and freedom

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

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Consistency and standards

Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

- some discrepancy between the navigation tabs and the page headers:

Green Tea Recipes <--> Tea Recipes Category

Buy Edible Green Tea <--> What's New Here

Green Tea Benefits <--> Tea Benefits Category

While they are similar, should normalize naming to ensure the user knows that they landed where they clicked.  SEV:High

Error prevention

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Recognition rather than recall

Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

- Search does not work or does not provide full site search.  Tried to search "heart" and returned no results - even though 'heart' is a benefits category. May be just a function of better tagging of articles/items.  SEV: High

- having full tab bar at the top of the site allows people to directly got to information, especially returning customers can go right to the buy section.

- providing an 'account' functionality is also great accelerator - saves entry time on address etc on returning customers.

Aesthetic and minimalist design

Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

- the left bar plays an odd role in the site depending on the page.  Usually it is just promoting a free cookbook - with a single link.  Based on the site template the remaining space is basically un-used.  Could have better use of space by eliminating the column except for on the Benefits page where it is employed to provide quick locations of benefits articles.  SEV:High

- the upper (tabbed) nav bar and the lower nav bar seem to have similar navigation items, but presented in a different order.  My inclination would be to use the lower bar for "secondary" items and leave the upper tabs for primary site content  SEV:Low

- left nav bar has inconsistent color throughout site - blue, green and purple.   Be more consistent with green throughout the rest of the site.  SEV: Med


- There is a large amount of readable content, but font seems small.  SEV:Med

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

- clicking 'Advanced Search' results in broken image icon, no other messaging around errors.  Sev:High

Help and documentation

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

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