The Focus Groups review of the peoples stories website.

The Focus Groups review of the peoples stories website raised a number of issues. The colour of the peoples stories website is grey and bland compared to its BBC counterpart WW2 Stories, which is an attractive green and more appealing. The BBC website also has its stories organised chronologically and the Focus Group suggested that they wanted to see a bigger array of categories that made the site easier to navigate and for them to find what they wanted quicker. Also when a category page was chosen they couldn’t see the videos initially as text was covering it. They made the suggestion that the text be placed in a box below the video so that all could be seen quite easily. The Focus Group and in particular Jim, Chris and Pat stated their frustration at having to register for everything online, and that quite often when they did register for something they were immediately inundated with spam. They also expanded further on the subject of registration mentioning that as soon as they see that you have to register for a site, that it would put them off using it, along with many others of their generation. They wanted to be able to use the site fully anyway without having to register, which in turn would help to build up trust in the website. At a later stage if people of the older generation wanted to engage with the website more, then they could register at that point. Thus developing a higher level of trust between the peoples stories website and the user.  

They also stated that many of their generation struggled with computer jargon and many didn’t know how to upload photographs and other content. The Focus Group wanted the creation of a fourth tab on the initial home page, that would be a demonstration tab. It would take them to a video or a game play scenario that would teach them step by step instructions on how to learn about computing; the internet; and how the site functions. Stating it should be set up in a similar way to the BBC computing tutorial website page, which had very simplistic instructions. They also reiterated their problems with computer jargon and gave an example regarding pixels. The group said that being given what the maximum or minimum size of a photograph that could be uploaded, using pixels as measurements (example 1600x1200 pixels) meant nothing to them as they didn’t know how big a pixel was. They said that they needed real physical measurements such as 8 by 6 inches or 16 by 12 cm’s. They also mentioned that they wanted Jpeg’s to be called photographs, and instead of having boxes saying browse, they wanted it to say upload photo. Thus simplifying the site as much as possible for them to use. They also said that the present help button was too small, in the wrong place, and didn’t really help them. The Focus Group stated that these suggestions would increase the websites fan base and help the older generation to engage with the website more.