Torciano.com Study

I found torciano.com while looking for vacation activities and decided to create personas, task scenarios, and carry out a usability study and present my findings. While this was an academic exercise, it highlighted the power that user-centered design has on site functionality.

Sketches and Wireframes

This report is addressed to my professor to synthesize ideas from the course material and identify issues discovered during the usability test I performed on torciano.com. The site was analyzed based on expected conventions of a website and with the help of task scenarios and participant observation.

Design recommendations were presented, followed by low and high-fidelity wireframes and sketches.

The wireframes were done using Microsoft Word and the high-fidelity mockups were hand drawn and filled in with watercolor. This low-tech method was used to create the high-fidelity mock up before I had gained skills in technical image manipulation with computer software.

Usability Test Report

This usability test report was developed to present my findings to Tenuta Torciano Winery. The report discussed the website purpose, testing methodology, findings, and recommendations for improved site usage.

This usability test enabled me to observe how participants moved through the website as they worked through task scenarios. My observations of participant behavior and commentary helped to form areas for site improvement that would increase usability while decreasing user frustration.

Personas

Two personas were created with torciano.com in mind to highlight users' needs, behaviors, and motivations. These personas guided the redesign of the navigation and site layout as demonstrated in the above sketches and wireframes.