Serving the Military Community: A Usability Study of the MCCS Quantico Website

Plan BThis study examined the Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS) website to identify whether usability issues exist for site users. Specifically, it implemented the use of 12 participants recruited from the website’s target user group to perform usability testing with concurrent think-aloud protocol on the interface. The intent was to determine what, if any, usability issues exist on the website. After the usability testing with concurrent think-aloud phase of the study, participants were given a post-test survey to gauge their overall experience with the website, as well as to capture additional data to support the usability testing data. The findings were then analyzed to determine the probable cause of usability issues that persisted amongst the participant group. This demonstrated that while many usability issues occurred for testing participants, the primary usability challenges on the website can be identified as broken hyperlinks, suboptimal information placement and design, and color and typography selection. While the results of this study identify specific usability issues, there is room for future research to determine whether usability issues exist across the entire website