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WIX: Articulation of Project. What? Why? How?

In studying and testing WIX.com I hope to achieve many things. But what does this have to do with you?

Introduction

My project, originally meant to examine the usability of WIX.com, has evolved some. It is therefore worth going through and explaining what I’m doing, why it is important, and how this fits into the greater project. My group will each be focus on a different type of website building tool across several web pages. We will then use our findings to compare and contrast these tools across a greater genre than if we had just examined one.

I will focus on multiple tools within WIX to fit my work into this larger project. When my group puts all our efforts together, we will focus on comparing one or maybe two similar tools across several different platforms. However for now I will be alone analyzing WIX and only WIX tools.

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Since I plan to focus on website creation tools, I will not only analyze them myself, but I will also run some basic usability tests and see if other users experience what I personally believe are shortcomings in WIX. This will reduce bias in my own analysis and hopefully add to the validity of the document as a whole. I will group my work under the six main heuristic values that usability.gov suggests, and I will also use close reading from many sources to back up my work.

My Project 

Why do you need to know this?

My troubles with usability may just be my own problem in this scenario. However, a leader in website creation such as WIX should in theory affect a wide audience. There is a strong probability that you or someone you know will have to at some point create a website or module using a tool similar to WIX, if not WIX itself. Want to steer clear of a website that could end up being a tar pit of user issue? Read my analysis. Or maybe you actually like the way the website is, and you want to know more about how it works? Read my analysis!

What does this have to do with the pandemic?

In the pandemic, online school and communications have taken precedence over the physical world. In analyzing a potential tool for educators to use in the virtual world of academics, perhaps I will be able to alleviate stress or even steer teachers away from using sites that may be more troublesome than useful. As a teacher, so few resources are readily available for free. If an educator must pick only one thing to use to create online modules for students, then perhaps I can at least warn them of the issues with a popular site before they are in too deep.

Who are the stakeholders of WIX?

There are many stakeholders of WIX, such as small business owners, educators, and even home-goods sellers. Even you potentially are a stakeholder in this site. If you were to use it for any long-standing development on your site, you rely upon WIX and the other stakeholders to keep it up.

Were any of the findings surprising?

Yes, as I actually found many useful tools on WIX. With the help of a short tutorial that gave me some of the basics at the beginning, I was also able to use them all correctly. I was more surprised to see that the Help Desk on WIX was insidious, and of no help to anyone other than maybe an AI.

Did assumptions or expectations need to be revisited or revised?

I have, especially considering that building a website is hard and that I am expecting it to be easy. I know that there are many fundamental issues with WIX, but perhaps a better look at why they are designed the way they are may yield to more conclusive and complex results.

How did the site fare? Better or worse than when you started?

It was alright, to say it plainly. It fared better than I thought it would under my own critiques. I hope that my participants are able to use the site enough to find their own misgivings with it as well as find their own groove, so to say, to effectively test the site. My users will be the ruler to grade this by in the end.

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