I am such a slack

I need to finish my Masters. The only thing holding me up is…well…me. My graduate project is on designing websites that “age well” meaning that they meet web standards and have been designed in a way that make them senior-friendly. This is a hold-over from my previous job, so it has been hard for me to feel like working on it.

I held focus groups in October (while I was on maternity leave) and asked 2 groups of seniors what they thought of the site (wvseniors.org). I was hoping they would have provided some feedback on the design, but mostly they just offered suggestions for content. While I think both focus groups were interesting, I found that this format is not very conducive to getting user feedback on a website. In Dec. 2004 we posted a user survey on the website and actually got better, more specific feedback on the site usability than with a face to face group of people.

I guess I am unsure as to how to put that in an official report on my graduate professional project. Part of the project was also to do a follow-up survey to ask them if the problems if there were any had been corrected…but if there weren’t any, I am not sure what to survey them on. On top of that, it isn’t my site any more, so I am not really as eager to do it.

I need to just buckle down and deal with it.

The hardest thing is motivating myself to sit down and listen to the recordings and transcribe it all. Listening is one thing, but transcribing is another. It is also something that is nearly impossible to do with a 6 month old wanting your attention.

Sigh. Wish me luck.