Cooper Hewitt is a Smithsonian design museum that incorporates innovative and experimental technology into the museum’s collections and resources. Recently, Cooper Hewitt has taken steps to update the public Application Programming Interface (API) section on their website. The goal of the API research was to evaluate the usability of the Cooper Hewitt API and search for potential hindrances that might detract from user experience with the website.

In order to reach to the goal, my team (alongside our classmates) recruited participants, setup tasks, recorded their reactions as they completed tasks issued by evaluators, analyzed data, summarized the key findings, and giving recommendations. We created 4 tasks and test questionnaires that supported collecting the data after our discussion. As a team member, I conducted remote moderated interviews with two participants via UserzoomGo. In order to focus on our moderating experiences, team members could join each testing session as note-taker and observer. Based on the tasks we created, Our interviews were conducted in experts of API and two different users: developer and novice .
The final report includes methodology, findings, insights, and recommendations. Individually, I conducted and took notes for user interviews, collaborated with teammates to prepare supporting materials, and discussed with teammates about collecting data from users. I also compiled the research results, designed the report, and created a presentation deck based on Cooper Hewitt Museum’s Visual Identity guideline. As a team, we wrote a final report and presented these findings and recommendations to Cooper Hewitt Museum’s staff.