As my Email correspondence received inconclusive results i created a survey using ‘Survey Monkey’ to gather more research into what my target audience thought of blackboard and what features were considered most important.

The questions that I asked in my survey are listed below:

• What is your overall opinion on Blackboard?

• When using Blackboard would you like the ability to alter the colour Themes to suit your choice?

• Did you know there was an App for Blackboard?

• If Answer was Yes, Have you used it and to what extent did you use it for?

• Do you feel assignments are easy to submit via Blackboard? (if not please explain why)

• When using Blackboard do you find it easy to navigate to other areas of the site? ( If no please explain why)

• How important are Blackboards features to you?

• If a new service was being developed that will improve upon Blackboard what features would you like to see incorporated into it’s design?

The link to my Survey is below: 

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZBCM5NS

Analysis of Results

I received a selection of results from my survey which revealed some important features that will be invaluable to my research and the development of my project.

From looking at these results I discovered that the majority of responses viewed blackboard in a negative view or that people were forced to use it as there is no alternative offered through the university.

These answers support my project to develop a new and improved form of online university education portal.

 

Once again the results of this question support my research into the ability to individualy customise colour schemes. This is positive as it means I can further my research into colour palettes and what style appeals to my target audiences.

The results for this question were inconclusive as everyone of the people who responded to my survey knew there was an app but what intriged me the most was how people use the app or why the don’t.

The responses I received on majority viewed the app in a negative view.  Some of the feedback i got consisted of “Yes, but found it was very difficult and not easy to navigate. I didn’t find the app useful at all.” and “I used it then deleted it immediately after due to its lack of functionality.”. This feedback proved useful as it meant that as part of my product I needed to create an app that works alongside my Website and is easy to use.

 

I found the results from this question rather interesting as 50% of my results said It was easy to submit work and 50% said it wasn’t. Some of the feedback included “There are lots of unnecessary rules you have to abide by: 2cm and 3cm margins, double space, and .doc file – it would be easily readable without all these and in a pdf format.” .  So in response to my project  I want to make sure the feature for submitting and viewing feedback is user friendly and easy to use as this will improve upon the user feedback about blackboards submission feature.

The general consensus of results highlights that the site is very much broken down into layers of chains. So for example if you are looking at a specific module you will go through multiple layers until you get to what you need to find, this aspect of navigation is good. However though the problem arises if you want to go back or need to look at something different most of the time you will need to go back to the homepage, then repeat the same process for different module. So linking back to my project i will try to design a more fluid navigation system for web and app. This will most likely consist of drop down menus that appear when the mouse hovers over the header.

I carried out this question for the fact that  when it comes to the dashboard design of the websites what areas I will need to highlight to make important and what areas are not as important.  From my responses i found that the assessment and feedback section will need to be one of the largest compared to the option for discussion boards which was considered one of the least important.

 

 

For my last question I left the answer open to the individual filling out the survey. The responses I recived proved highly useful as I had responses for features that I had completly overlooked. Some of the features include and instant messaging system similar to Facebook so at the start of the year if individuals are in groups for work they haven’t got to search through sites like Facebook to find and add them as friends, this also removes the factor if someone doesn’t have Facebook they can still be in the loop. Another feature I thought was a really important feature was the option to edit and add items to the timetable feature, so students can plan around their timetables and studies.

In conclusion out of all the methods of research I have looked at this survey has delivered with the most relevant information that will most likely go on to develop my project for the better by allowing it to respond to real user feedback and problems.