Redesigning Craigslist.org for Older Adults - Keenan May Sahithya Baskaran Nikita X. Xiong Abhishek Nandakumar Psych 6023, Fall 2012

Redesigning Craigslist.org for Older Adults

                 Keenan May

              Sahithya Baskaran

                Nikita X. Xiong

             Abhishek Nandakumar

                 Psych 6023,

                  Fall 2012

Abstract

        Craigslist.org is a popular ‘online classifieds’ website. It provides basic tools that allow users to

buy or sell goods and services locally, or to meet up with like-minded people or groups. This is a site that

offers services that older adults (aged 65+) might want to use; however, the current site design presents

usability problems that may prevent this. The present paper makes redesign recommendations based on

the capabilities, preferences and tendencies of older adults, as determined by a review of existing

literature, an accessibility assessment, a questionnaire, and a focus group session.

Keywords: website accessibility, aging, human-computer interaction

Before we began considering the design of craigslist.org we wanted to familiarize ourselves with

the capabilities and usage habits of older adults, along with the web design principles that arise by

considering these things. There are a variety of well-documented differences in the cognitive, perceptual

and motor abilities in older adults, many of which are relevant to website design.

        Older adults often have a reduced ability to maintain focused attention (Rogers & Fisk, 2004),

and may have reduced working memory spans, or analogous correlates (Salthouse, 1994). They also tend

to have trouble constructing, maintaining and visualizing mental models of complex site hierarchies, and

remembering how they got to a particular location in a site (Coyne and Nielsen, 2002). Accordingly,

relatively shallow, broad structures should be used (Zaphiris et al., 2002). The decline in working

memory and ability to maintain focused attention can lead to periodic losses of bearing. As such, designs

that do employ hierarchies should incorporate very clear ‘breadcrumbs’ or other indications of past

activity and location within a structure; users should always be able to orient themselves at a glance

(Rogers & Fisk, 2004). In addition, it should be made extremely clear which links have been visited and

where the user currently is on a site. Pages should be bookmarkable (instead of content loading

dynamically), since older adults may rely on bookmarks to access previously visited locations.

           While using broad, shallow site structures helps the designer increase usability in light of the

dropoff in focus and working memory, there is also evidence that the presence of too many links on a

page can be confusing to older adults. Fisk et al. (2004) provides the recommendation that site

organization should be shallow and broad, with a large number of descriptive, task-driven links on a

given page. This allows for effective navigation even given a potential decrease in working memory

capacity and the ability to maintain attention/ keep in mind the previous steps taken towards that goal,

without leading to overly complex counterintuitive pages individual pages. Using expandable ‘walking

menus’ that allow for hierarchical structure without requiring users to drill down into the hierarchy (and

potentially get lost) are one common solution Zaphiris (2004).

Older adults may have increased difficulty making inferences about site functions and the

meaning of text (Fisk et al., 2004), perhaps due to the oft-cited decline in so-called ‘fluid intelligence’.

For example, deciding that ‘contact us’ would be the place to look for ‘help’ requires a level of inference.

Fisk et al. (2004) notes that older adults may becomes easily misled by extraneous information or

misleading links, which is supported by research by Zacks & Hasher (1997), who found that older adults

had a diminished ability to inhibit task-irrelevant stimuli. In addition, many older adults may not be

familiar with the jargon and terminology used on the web, and designers should replace such terms with

language that is not specific to this domain (Chisnell, Lee & Redish, 2004). Older adults may also be

extremely cautious about what links they choose to follow, but tend to be more confident and less hesitant

to click on links that are described as actively voiced actions (Chadwick-Dias, McNulty & Tullis, 2004).

In short, when creating links, designers should use simple, directly representative descriptions that

indicate active functions that can be clearly linked to a user’s goal without requiring specialized

knowledge or logical leaps. However, older adults may have a larger existing semantic knowledge base,

and Rogers et al (2005) advises the use of metaphorical resemblance to conventional items (skeumorphs,

for example) in order to support understanding of the meaning of site elements, when this is appropriate.

        Visual Capabilities: There are often declines in visual acuity, color discrimination, color

sensitivity, and immunity to glare, as well as a gradual yellowing of the lens, as humans age (Rogers et al,

2005). In addition, there are reductions the range of effective peripheral vision. In light of this, high

contrast color schemes should be employed, and yellow, violet, blue and green should not be used in close

proximity (Tumosa, 2003). In addition, care should be taken not to use subtle interface elements such as

small clickable bullets or fold-down carrots (Czaja & Lee, 2003). Due to the reduced contrast sensitivity,

older adults may occasionally get lost when leading large bodies of text, so designers should create

frequent anchor points, paragraph breaks, and subheaders in order to allow for quick reorientation if this

occurs (Czaja & Lee, 2003).

           In addition, larger font sizes should be used, particularly if an item is close to the edge of the

screen and needs to be seen. Echt (in Morrel, 2002) recommends font sizes of 14 pt for body text and 18-

24 pt for headers. Bernard et al. (2001) found that a group of older adults tended to prefer 14 pt, serif

fonts, and had increased reading speed using this font compared to 12 pt fonts and 14 pt sans serif fonts.

Coyne and Nielsen (2002) propose another approach: include a button for changing font size. In order to

support this, it is important to format and style pages such that resizing text will not break the layout.

Older adults employ page-scanning methods similar to other groups, but they tend to attend heavily to

cues such as highlighting and boldness when carrying out such searches (Redish, 2004). Finally, pages

also need to format and display correctly when printed.

           There also tends to be a decline in fine motor control over time- more specifically, there is

evidence for an increase in the force to noise ratio and reduced perceptual processing efficiency (Walker,

Philbin, & Fisk, 1997). As such, designers should ensure that mouse and touch targets exceed a certain

size. In addition, menus that involve fine movement (hierarchical drop-downs, for example) should be

avoided (Dickinson, Eisma, Gregor, 2003, in Van de Watering, 2005).

        Older adults also tend to have different general usage patterns and attitudes toward technology

when compared with younger people. They tend to only employ a technology when it is clear that that

there will be a benefit to doing so, rather than employing a lower-tech or more familiar solution (Rogers

et al., 2005). With this in mind, designers should make benefits to usage explicit.

                                                  Methods

Functional Accessibility Evaluator

           Improving support for accessibility tools is a good way to expand the group of users that can

adequately interact with websites, and often leads to better web development practices, which can benefit

everyone involved. Many of the issues described earlier (visual decline, hearing loss, motor skill

diminishment and cognitive decline) can be counteracted through the use of accessibility-minded

technologies and features. Curran et al. (2007) provides a overview of accessibility concerns and

guidelines. For example, the visually impaired may use screen readers, which interpret parts of the

website HTML and use text-to-speech to read page contents to the user. In order to support this, web

pages have to be constructed and annotated in a certain way: images must be given ‘alt text’ descriptions

to be read. If this text description is missing, visually impaired users may not be able to adequately

interact with the page.

        We employed the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) to evaluate the accessibility of

craigslist’s code. The FAE is an open source tool that analyzes several layers and sub-domains of a

website simultaneously. It measures adherence to the iCITA HTML Best Practices, which in turn

measures adherence to W3C WCAG, US EITA standards, and IITAA standards- essentially, whether site

programming supports the use of accessibility tools.

        FAE analyzes a site and provides results in the following categories: navigation/orientation

(‘inclusion of structural markup that facilitates navigation and contextual orientation’), text equivalents

(‘proper use of images for interoperability … text descriptions’), scripting (‘avoidance of scripting

techniques’), styling (‘Use of CSS styling techniques’), HTML standards (‘support for HTML standards

to improve interoperability and provide more choices in the use of technologies for rendering web

content’.) In short, the way the page is coded should support customizability and flexibility in how the

content is represented in order to allow it to be responsive to the unique needs of each user.

           We analyzed three levels of Craigslist pages using the FAE: the homepage, category, and

specific item pages. Craigslist has a fairly consistent set of problems with accessibility, centered around

navigation, styling, and HTML standards compliance. See Appendix A for detailed findings.

        In terms of navigation, Craigslist had problems with properly tagging elements for use with

screen readers and other assistive devices. It fails to use header tags, which used by screen readers to

provide logical divisions of the page to users. In addition, subheadings were not nested properly- that is,

subsection titles were not ‘inside’ of section titles due to the improper use of header tags, which again

obfuscates the hierarchy and reading sequence to assistive tools. Input forms were missing title and label

properties, which again will cause many screen readers to fail. In addition, the default language (‘lang’

attribute) was not specified, which could cause problems with customizable text-to-speech voicing and

automated translations.

With regards to styling, many pages were laid out using tables. This is a deprecated feature in

current HTML- formatting should be done with CSS  elements. In practical terms, the structure of

the pages should be described so that alternative devices can properly parse and represent the sequence of

items- this means using  tags, not HTML tables (Fisk et al., 2004). Pages also used discrete font,

styling and position HTML tags. Hard-coding style elements like this in the HTML (which should focus

on content, not style) does not allow those with limited vision to apply their own CSS stylesheets in order

to do things like increase element size or contrast. Finally, pages were often missing metatags specifying

character encoding, which has can hinder the use of alternative rendering tools and screen readers.

Questionnaire Design.

        Gathering quantitative data is always important when trying to inform designs. With this in

mind, we constructed a brief questionnaire (Appendix B). We first asked several basic demographic and

web usage questions. After this, we addressed user habits and desires related to using things like

classified ads, primarily to allow us to arrange content in the redesign in a way that emphasizes features

which older adults might find most useful. Finally, we asked a few direct questions about familiarity with

Craigslist, so that we could plan our subsequent focus group effectively.

Questionnaire Findings

           We distributed our questionnaire to a group of five older adults from the Atlanta area. These

adults were generally familiar with technology and using the internet, but only one of them had used

Craigslist before. As such, we decided to provide participants in our subsequent focus group with

extensive information about Craigslist.org, instead of asking about prior experiences and existing

likes/dislikes. In addition, we chose to ask questions about analogous experiences like paper classified

ads. The goal of asking these questions was to find out about interests and usage habits; however, we did

get some of this information from our questionnaire. These results, generally put, were that older adults

indicated a high interest in finding local events, finding local groups with shared interests, buying and

selling items, and buying and selling services.   Conversely, they were less interested in finding jobs,

houses, or local discussion groups. Based off of this, we chose to emphasize and de-emphasize certain

parts of the front page, and to combine or split off some categories. In our first mockup, for example, we

arranged ‘find a job’ at the end of the page (based off of normal scanning/ reading direction principles),

and chose to retain the event calendar function, which we had previously thought did not necessarily

support user goals on Craigslist. We had previously assumed that user goals would primarily be to buy

used items, but the results of the questionnaire indicated that this was not the case.

Respondent Interests, from questionnaire

Initial Mockup (Appendix D)

        Before conducting a focus group session, we mocked up a redesign in order to have something to

show to participants. This redesign incorporated a simplified visual organization for the content headers

from original website. It maintained much of the existing structure in the left column and the header bar.

We endeavored to make the search function more visible, and wanted to clearly demarcate posting

actions from browsing actions.

Focus Group Design

        The focus group was comprised of five older adults with varying levels of computer experience.

Participants were both married and unmarried, and only one had experience with Craigslist. They were

recruited through the Human Factors and Aging Laboratory database. The point of doing a focus group,

which is a sort of moderated and prompted panel discussion, was to get organic feedback from real users

about usage habits and original and redesigned craigslist designs. We drafted a moderator script

(Appendix C) but did not try to adhere to this verbatim.

We wanted to address three general points during this session: what participants might want to do

on a site like craigslist, what specific usability problems participants might see and whether participants

like the direction of initial redesigns, and why. We chose to address these in sequence when conducting

the focus group session.

        Participants were first given printed copies of the website home page, a page displayed on

selection of a sub-menu and a page displayed on selecting an item, along with a copy of the redesign. The

discussion was then directed to their thoughts on various aspects of the website, such as the size of the

text used, the colors used on the website, the layout of the page, use of multimedia on the page, thoughts

on navigation and visibility of critical functions on the site.

        Participants provided valuable pertinent design suggestions about various aspects of the website

that were not covered in the questions. It was a highly motivated group that was eager to participate and

contribute toward the design of a more accessible craigslist website.

Focus Group Findings

        Part of the craigslist website evaluation was the usage of a focus group to gain feedback

especially for older adults. Focus groups are sessions in which a moderator guides discourse by a small

group of representative participants around a topic of inquiry. The main purpose of conducting the focus

group discussion was to find out about general habits regarding Craigslist and classified ads, gauge

usability of the existing site, and get feedback on our initial redesign. The discussion and opinions

expressed helped determine accessibility design recommendations for older adults using the web site.

        In response to general questions about internet usage, participants reported that they tended to use

the internet for communication, ordering merchandise, financial actions, and travel. They also were

interested in finding health and dietary information online. Common complaints included the lack of

customization, cluttered/ overfilled pages, and popups. They also tended to be wary of making non-

banking transactions online due to the possibility of scams. It should be noted that we did not consider

this aspect in our redesigns of Craigslist, since part of the appeal of the site is the fact that it does not

require buyers or sellers to go through a complex system to register, give feedback, etc. However, we did

decide to retain the persistent page element that allows Craigslist users to report scams, and made sure

this was consistently present, but not obtrusive (in the bottom right). Adding a robust feedback system

might be a good direction for future study, however.

        Participants mentioned they used to read classifieds in newspapers earlier but do not anymore

probably because of the perception that fewer people placed ads in newspaper classifieds. One worked in

market research reported frequently using Craigslist to find people with specific qualifications. However,

most participants did not know what Craigslist was and, when shown the site, were not clear on what

exactly it was for. Seeing this, we wanted to make it very clear what one could actually do on the site,

and chose to emphasize active voice and functional, descriptive language. Participants reported that they

were more likely to use the website to search for specific things, rather than just browse without distinct

direction. However, one participant who was seeing the website for the first time said it seemed to have a

lot to offer and that he would browse through it if he had the time. When asked to go through a basic

task, one participant responded that he would simply type search terms in the search field, eschewing the

navigation structure entirely. As such, we chose to support this direct search behavior by adding a

‘category’ search pulldown, and increasing the visual prominence of the search bar.

        Participants were generally confused about aspects of the content organization scheme employed

by the existing main page. They felt that the purpose of the site was unclear, were unsure about what the

‘gigs’ section was for, and did not know whether the site was automatically customized by city. In light

of this, we chose to eliminate the ‘gigs’ section, to make the fact that the current city meant results were

limited to that city more obvious, and to make overall site function more apparent with use of active

dialogue labels. However, participants as a whole were interested in the site, which translates what they

had liked about classifieds into digital form. The main barrier, thus, seemed to be usability.

        We had group members walk through a few basic tasks with the existing interface (Appendix E)

in order to identify failure points and problems. When giving the task of finding local events, participants

did not appear to even notice the search bar or event calendar for almost a minute. In addition, when

asked where they would look to sell an item, group members were unable to find the ‘post’ button.

Interface elements in the upper left of the screen were not being noticed as interactive; instead the focus

appeared to be on using the content area for navigation, which is generally not web design convention.

        Finally, we had participants delve into submenus in order to search for a specific item. When at

subscreens, participants wanted to know whether they were able to filter or sort the list of results, and did

not realize that the price range function was available. This is again due to poor visual design and layout

that deemphasizes crucial elements and their relevance to page content. On the specific item page,

participants liked the large image and terse description, but were completely unclear on how to actually

proceed with buying the item. “Reply to post” requires a novel inference, uses web jargon, and is not

appropriately located or visually emphasized- all things that were likely to make it less clear or obvious to

older adults.

        Finally, participants offered brief comments on the mock-ups of the redesign. They found the

larger print (size 14) helpful and easier to read, and liked the structure and organization of content, in

addition to the appearance of the main page. On the item list page, they liked the visual price filter

option, and felt that using this might motivate them to search for the best deal and continue the process.

Finally, they enjoyed the alphabetical ordering of items and the way they were arranged on the page.

Overall, the participants were happy with the direction taken by the redesign, and they were comfortable

with the flow of tasks on the mock-up, especially the procedural method of performing tasks.

                                                  Discussion

           Craigslist’s site does a good job of matching the desires and needs of its clientele. A posting on

craigslist frequently consists of a few words describing what the item is, a price and contact information

of the seller. Craigslist ads typically do not have a lot of potential for confusion and visitors to the site

understand its purpose. They know when they click on an item and see the price that the seller is looking

to sell that item for that price. However, there are several aspects of the website which could be improved

further, and we tried to use our usability evaluation and focus group discussion to design a mock-up

illustrating some of our design recommendations.

While feedback on the mockups was generally positive, we wanted to respond to the data

gained from the focus group by iterating on it. The second version of our redesign of the homepage

maintains our earlier decomposition of main page functions into six sets of ‘buy and sell’ buttons, but

tweaks the verbiage to add consistency and descriptiveness (Appendix F). We also added an option for

users to increase the font size, which is responsive to recommendations made by Coyne and Nielsen

(2002).

          Because craigslist covers such a wide array of tasks and categories, it can sometimes be difficult

for the users to find a specific topic, even so with categories do not have very clear headings. It is evident

that a search feature is essential for such a website; we made the search function more salient through the

use of high contrast in our redesign, keeping with recommendations made by Czaja & Lee (2003) that

older adults responded well to visual guidance cues. Users in the focus group had found the event

calendar to be ambiguous; in addition, they were unclear on what kind of events the calendar was

providing information about. In response to (Rogers et al., 2005) and to observations during the focus

group, we realized that older adults may be less likely to notice content in the edges of the page. By

keeping only the logo in the upper left and organizing the page such that crucial content was in the center,

users would not miss out on crucial links and information in the periphery. We chose to maintain the

generally monochromatic color scheme of Craigslist in order to preserve visual identity, but employed

grouping and contrast in order to communicate page divisions and structure.

          It is recommended (Rogers & Fisk, 2004) that designs that employ hierarchies incorporate

indications of past activity, and we maintained the existing format of indicators that show the links that

have been visited for the re-design (Appendix G) by using breadcrumb navigation. From the focus group

discussion, users specified that they could not locate any filters despite a price range filter being provided.

Filters are especially important in craigslist as there are large number of listings under each category, all

of which may not be relevant to users. In our redesign, we included a side bar, which contains specific

filters such as category, price and location so that users can filter the listings easily. We also included

images in a preview of each listing that can help users to make a decision before viewing further details.

We also included a sort function that can sort listings based on relevance and price. By default, the search

bar on the page with listings searches within the specific category to help them find specific listings in

that category easily. By changing the category to ‘All’ users can search the entire website.

        On selecting a specific item/listing, we recommend using the design as shown in Appendix H.

We maintained the large image and format of description as in the existing website as it conveys the

required information easily but made the ‘Reply to Post’ feature more prominent by using high-contrast

for the button and placing it right next to the description. Clear indicators of the path taken to reach this

page are provided to help users navigate easily through the website.

           Participants in the focus group liked having lots of information available, but the found the

grouping unintuitive, and felt overwhelmed due to the lack of segmentation and grouping. To tackle this,

we propose an alternate version of our redesign of the homepage (Appendix I) that is more directly

responsive to research by Fisk et al. (2004) and Zaphiris et al. (2004), which recommend the use of a

shallow, broad design with clearly grouped content. When doing this drop-down menu version, we

placed logically related items in proximity without subdividing the page visually. The homepage uses a

‘walking menu’ and has icons that are indicative of the actions that the links are related to. This creates a

shallow hierarchy yet avoids overwhelming users by displaying a lot of information at once. We would

have liked to have done a card-sorting activity, in which participants place heading items into what they

see as logical categories, but we did this ourselves during the redesign using the results of our

questionnaire.

Conclusion

        In our user studies, we found that the functionality of Craigslist is generally desirable by older

adults, but that the usability problems present a barrier to usage. Implementing one of our final redesigns

would lower this barrier, based off of our research, user testing, and design iteration.

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                      Appendix A: Line Item Analysis of Accessibility Test Results

                                                  Main Page

Navigation and Orientation

Titles: There are a lot of missing H1 tags. That is to say, lots of the headings (section titles) are not

technically headings.

Subheadings: Subheadings are not nested properly, due to the lack of H1 tags.

Form Control Labels: Some input elements are missing title and label attributes (type attributes).

Default Language: There was no default language (lang attribute) specified in the HTML metatag. If the

screen reader wanted to provide an appropriate voicing or translate the page, it would not know how to do

so.

Layout Tables:

There are tables used for formatting;  elements should be used instead. This makes the reading

order easier to manage. In addition, using CSS means that some users can employ their own stylesheets

in order to increase legibility.

List of Items Page

Navigation and Orientation

Titles: There are a lot of missing H1 tags. That is to say, lots of the headings (section titles) are not

technically headings.

Subheadings: Subheadings are not nested properly, due to the lack of H1 tags.

Form Control Labels: Some input elements are missing title and label attributes (type attributes).

Default Language: There was no default language (lang attribute) specified in the HTML metatag. If the

screen reader wanted to provide an appropriate voicing or translate the page, it would not know how to do

so.

Frames: Many frames were lacking title attributes

Styling

Text Styling: The site should not be using bold tags. In general they should be using header classes.

Also, the ‘font’ element should not be used; instead this should done in css.

Layout Tables:

There are tables used for formatting;  elements should be used instead. This makes the reading

order easier to manage. In addition, using CSS means that some users can employ their own stylesheets

in order to increase legibility.

Html Standards

W3C Specifications: there was no character encoding metatag specified

                                              Specific Item Page

Navigation and Orientation

Titles: There are a lot of missing H1 tags. That is to say, lots of the headings (section titles) are not

technically headings.

Subheadings: Subheadings are not nested properly, due to the lack of H1 tags.

Default Language: There was no default language (lang attribute) specified in the HTML metatag. If the

screen reader wanted to provide an appropriate voicing or translate the page, it would not know how to do

so.

Html Standards

W3C Specifications: there was no character encoding metatag specified

APPENDIX B: Questionnaire

This questionnaire is a part of the research project related to the design of a commonly used website

conducted by students of Georgia Institute of Technology. You have been chosen as one of the

participants of the survey because you belong to the group of potential users that we are interested in. The

results of this survey will be used for academic purposes only. Estimated time for this questionnaire

completion is 5-7 minutes. The research team greatly appreciates your help and support with this research

and thanks you for your valuable contribution!

  1.    What language are you most comfortable using?

  2.    What is your highest education level?

  3.    How interested are you in doing the following things?

  •     Find a local group of people with a shared interest

  •     Find schedule and location information on local events

  •     Meet new individuals

  •     Join a local discussion group

  •     Find a new house or apartment

  •     Find a vacation home

  •     Buy used items

  •     Sell your stuff

  •     Look up classified ads for services

  •     Find a job

  •     Sell a service locally

4. When trying to find a specific thing on a website, which of the following are you most likely to do first:

        Use a search function

        Browse by clicking links (clicking a category, for example)

5. How likely would you be to do each of the following on your computer, if it was very convenient?

  •     Find a local group of people with a shared interest

  •     Find schedule and location information on local events

  •     Meet new individuals

  •     Join a local discussion group

  •     Find a new house or apartment

  •     Find a vacation home

  •     Buy used items

  •     Sell your stuff

  •     Look up classified ads for services

  •     Find a job

  •     Sell a service locally

6. Which of the following device do you use to read/browse a website:

        Computer

        Touchscreen Tablet (iPad, etc.)

        Mobile Phone

        Other

7. Which of the following methods would you use to find specific information about a lost dog:

Newspaper classifieds ,Community notice board, Online, Ask a friend, Other

8.When you visit a website home page, would you rather have all options available, or have the site help

you approach your goal through a series of steps?

  •     Lots of information on one page

  •     Step by step guide

9. How often do you go to the following websites: eBay, Craigslist, Amazon?

10. What is your favorite way to look for and buy second-hand items that others want to sell?

Garage/ Estate Sale, Online auctions (like eBay), Pawn Shops/ Antique Shops, Classified ads, Other

                                APPENDIX C: FOCUS GROUP SCRIPT

Introduction

We’re learning about how to do usability studies on websites, and we chose Craigslist.org.

We want to know what you think about this site so we can make it easier to use.

Opening Question

0) When did you last look at classified ads in the newspaper?

        (pivot: oh, last week? -> get anything interesting?)

(pivot: a long time ago? €→ (transient))

Transient Questions

1) Have you ever bought used stuff online?

        (pivot: what is that? -> like craigslist or ebay)

        (pivot: yeah, all the time -> (key questions 2a)

        (pivot: no, not often or never -> (key question 2b)

Key Questions

2a) (If they buy things online all the time) It sounds like a lot of you buy stuff online. Have you ever used

craigslist.org for this?

        (pivot: yes, I have (key question 3a)

        (pivot: no -> (key question 3b)

        (pivot: seriously mixed -> (key question 3c)

2b) (If they haven’t bought used stuff often or never) It sounds like a lot of you don’t like to buy things

online. Why is that?

3a) (If yes) You guys have all used craigslist? What did you use it for? How did you like it?

3b) (If no) Y’all don’t use craigslist much? Why not? Do you use other sites for similar tasks?

3c) (If seriously mixed) Why did you guys use it, and why did you guys not? For those who used it, what

did you use it for?

4) (Ok, for those of you hasn’t seen the site), here is what it looks like (pull up the site) So here is how

you buy something on the site: (walk through it) Do you see any problems?

        (prompt: Is the text readable?

        (prompt: would you know what to do on this page?

        (prompt: would you want to see more or less information?

5) Let’s say you wanted to buy a bicycle. How would you do it?

(we are running the computer, they yell out what to do)

6) How could that have been easier?

7) Here’s the current sketch of a redesign. What do you think of this design?

Ending Questions

10) so you have given us some really useful information that will help us redesign craigslist.org. Is there

anything else you would like to tell us?

APPENDIX D: INITIAL MOCKUP

APPENDIX E : ORIGINAL HOMEPAGE

APPENDIX F : HOMEPAGE REDESIGN 1

APPENDIX G : LIST VIEW REDESIGN

APPENDIX H : ITEM VIEW REDESIGN

APPENDIX I : HOMEPAGE REDESIGN 2