My Apologies

Hey guys sorry that i missed the wednesday meeting. I had a mandatory event that i had to go to. I was wondering if we could meet this weekend? Anyway here's the data I've collected thus far.

Visitor Interview:
3rd Year. Male UCLA Student. Has no experience with the maps.ucsd.edu site.

I'll go into details later, but the main points were that
1) He wanted a larger map (on the screen) so that when you zoom in you can still see the location relative to the rest of the campus (as opposed to just beeing able to see the building)
2) He really didn't like the search results and complained that they were too arbitrary (some results were not relevant to the search etc)

Anyway here's how the interview went down:

I asked him to find each of the 6 admin buildings for the colleges and study lounges for the colleges using whatever means available to him on the computer (i didn't leave maps.ucsd.edu for him open)

He used google (because "it's the easiest way to search for things") and typed in "UCSD Maps"
the first link was to maps.ucsd.edu and he got there from it.

Instead of searching for the admin sites, he clicked on the buildings link which then gave a wide range of buildings. He clicked his way to Revelle Admin building. It showed the visitor's map.
-He spent a lot of time looking at the map and didn't realize that the yellow highlighted building was a representation of where the location was. He eventually figured it out and commented that "the name of the building is blocked out by the yellow dot."
-He wasn't very comfortable getting to the location. He said that he would need to be in the general area first before being able to begin finding it.

Next he clicked on Marshall Admin building.
He said he wasn't that comfortable getting to the location (similar to the revelle one). I asked him what would give him a better mental representation of the location. He said that
1) "if they made the frame (of the map) bigger it would be better because you get a better perspective"
2) "The map seems too compact. It makes it hard because UCSD is a very large campus."

He went to the building index again and tried to find the ERC admin building, but couldn't. He then clicked on the visitors link and still couldn't find it. Next he tried searching for "roosevelt admin" and finally got the yellow dot to show up (he found he location.)

I asked him how he felt about parking there, and and first he said that he wouldn't be comfortable parking near it, but then he noticed the parking map and clicked on it and said he wouldn't have a hard time afterall. He mentioned that it would be better if the main roads were easier to see so that it's easier to drive there.

Now in finding the 6th college admin building he had the most trouble. Building index lead to nothing. Clicked on departments and looked around still nothing. he then went to google and ended up on tritonlink. He said that if he got to the 6th college main website, he'd probably be able to find the admin building. The link he found under the 6th college site in "About Us" lead him back to the maps.ucsd.edu map (this time with a yellow dot indicating where the location is).

He was confused at this point because the building highlighted didn't have a name. He said that he would have to assume that this was the admin building since it was the building under "About Us". He said that he'd call the building and confirm because the map didn't help him out enough in finding the location.

For the Muir admin building, he did the same thing as with the 6th, he went to the Muir main site. This time, the link lead him to maps.ucsd.edu as well, but a huge chunk of John muir college was highlighted. He said that he had no idea where the admin building was and would just go to the general area and ask around from there.

The guy i interviewed had no qualms with the visual aspect of the map because it has "visitor, parking, and simple" maps, which he thought was helpful.

This guy had a very difficult time finding any study lounges. He wanted to stop (due to frustration) but i urged him to keep going as if he absolutely needed to find the location.

He searched for "Marshall Stduy hall" in the search results and many search results appeared, none being a study lounge of any sort. He then went to google and looked for "Muir college study hall". He clicked on the John Muir site and commented that he'd have to say the study halls were in tioga and tenaya, because otherwise he'd have no idea where it was. (The information on the Muir site indicated that you could study there). He didn't know that Tioga and Tenaya were residential areas.

The rest of the colleges held the same results. He couldn't really find any of them and became rather frustrated. He commented that the maps site wasn't that bad, but if you had to look for specific things (like that maybe don't have a specific name) then it's hard to find.

He said that he would just go onto the campus and ask the people around where the location was (around the general area) because he couldn't find it with maps.ucsd.edu.