The purpose of the calendar is to inform visitors of special dates that are coming up and to allow visitors to add their own  special dates. I started by using ical, another program that came with my computer, but quickly realized it would not be sufficient for allowing visitors to edit the calendar. Next, I tried a google calendar. When my mom tried to add an event she had to first create an account. There was some difficulty doing this and I felt visitors would not want to go through the trouble of creating an account in order to enter a date. My brother suggested I try calendar.net and that is the one I chose. In addition to allowing visitors to add events, it also allows a link to a URL where one can find a map to the event. This was an added benefit that I had not thought about.

There were two pieces of feedback that I received that helped me improve my calendar. First, a peer tried to enter an event, but was asked to enter a user name and password. This should only happen when there is a change by the administrator to the entire calendar, like header, footer, font, color, etc. One would click “daily”, “duration”, or “periodic” next to add event and not be prompted for a user name and password. I really appreciate my peer taking the time to try and enter an event because it made it very clear that I was making the user think too much, was not making the steps obvious, and did not provide any instruction or a place to get help easily. Although I have directions on the blog page there is no way for the user to know they are there. No wonder nobody has entered any events. Further, I needed to observe a person trying to add an event to see what obstacles they came across. I had walked my mom through the steps, but then I didn’t see what might have prevented her from successfully adding events on her own.

The second piece of feedback that was very helpful also came from a peer. She suggested I add more events, even if it is fake. I think if a user comes to the site and there are very few things on the calendar then they might think,  I don’t want to be the only one, maybe I’m not really supposed to do this, etc. Also, there were only birthdays in May. A person might see that and only think they are supposed to enter birthdays. Further, the lack of information made the calendar pretty boring. Why would someone want to return for just birthdays? Most of us already know the birthdays or can just call and ask someone.

Both suggestions were very helpful and reminded me of a number of principles I had been violating, primarily usability and testing.