Welcome
This website is a digital report for the usability testing of the
TrailReady hiking guidance site.
It includes our heuristic evaluation, test personas, test plan,
and user task scripts based on established usability
principles.
The link to the website is TrailReady.
Why TrailReady?
TrailReady was selected as the focus because it is a beginner-friendly hiking guide, and we wanted to explore whether it successfully communicates, supports, and encourages first-time users with limited hiking experience.
Note on My Project
Initially, I was under the impression that we needed to build our
own website for testing, based on responses from the course
discussion board. A peer explained that we would create our own
site, and the professor confirmed their answer. By the time I
realized that we were actually expected to evaluate an existing
public website, I had already committed to developing TrailReady
from scratch.
While this website allowed me to apply usability
principles in both design and evaluation, it also limited the
realism of the test — as my site was smaller and lacked the
complexity of a live, full-featured website. If I had tested a
preexisting site, the insights would likely have been deeper and
more applicable to real-world users. Still, the experience was
valuable and gave me firsthand exposure to usability planning,
testing, and analysis from the ground up.