04-0107-2025
Attending: Cora Rose Bobo-Shisler , Victoria Ackroyd, Shannon Mitchell, (facilitator), Nick Andrews (respondent), Marguerite Dibble, Elizabeth Seyler, Juliet Norton
Review of Testing Materials
Recruiting respondents per Cora: currently 15 identified by WCCC board, mostly in Oregon. Seeking in other states. Need more systematic approach to finding them.
Q: Ask facilitators to help?
Q: Could/should GT attend tomorrow’s WCCC meeting to help with recruitment question?
Other facilitators: Dr. Avik Mukherjee at avikm@arizona.edu (replaces Debankur for AZ), hoping he will find other facilitators in his area.
Mock Facilitator Training
Shannon gives an overview of the purpose of testing.
Was it helpful to have the document in advance? - There was a bug opening the tool link in firefox
Facilitators should make sure to use the “Develop” link
Complete the facilitator form ahead of testing to walk through what that will feel like.
Elizabeth will update the form to ensure people can submit multiple responses
Cora didn’t realize how the browse cover crop flow worked, so mentioning that to other facilitators would be good.
Cora also glad to see how to get to the selected crops and the comparison view.
Cora will check about updates on recruiting & who will test
How to communicate the testers? → Email Marguerite & Elizabeth so we can have a tracker
This looks great! The way it’s laid out is very helpful, it answers so many of my questions for me. Excited to try for the mock test and see how it goes. The biggest part is the narrative and seeing how I approach interacting with people
encourage people to narrate their experience as they’re going through (added to the brief)
Based on how it goes with Victoria, we might make tweaks before the Monday testing.
Victoria may have small interruptions during the mock testing session.
Are their options to record sessions tomorrow? → we can, Elizabeth will
Cora would like to see how it looks → invited for tomorrowNick A is an irrigation veg farmer in Extention agent in Oregon with lots of cover crop experience; does some applied research
Devel feedback:
Ticket: Could starting map show Alaska and Hawaii more clearly? Nick was first person to scroll around to find them.
Ticket: Clearer headings: Cover Crop Goals, Cash Crop Growing Window, Cover Crop Additional Filters. Adam: Change the Additional Filters section only, not the others that have been vetted by other CCCs.
Issues for consideration:
Need to know how login helps users before considering doing it. The develop version didn’t have the popup at noon today. Adam: Use incognito mode
Add something on cc Info Pages such as “scroll down to see more” How let user know that there’s more info?
Welcome page: would like to see a description of what the selector does.
Many people don’t know the street address of their research fields. Street address could be very remote from the field he wants to use for the selector.
On Site Conditions page, user selected Site Conditions instead of Next. Make it more clear which people should select.
What if someone would irrigate veggies but not the cover crops? How would they indicate that?
People don’t understand why things are grayed out and how to get them ungrayed
Nick misunderstood what to put in the Cover Crop Name on Calendar view
Calendar view, change from trash can to check marks when people select species
Not sure what Average Goal Rating means; might be more useful to see the goals. Not sure what the Comparison View is adding beyond what the Crop List offers.
Add option to print everything user did in the session so don’t have to open the tool again to see it
Facilitator notes:
Awkward when they talk about data not being completed. How word it better?
Start exploring and clicking around, then let me know your first impressions
What to do with BC farmers Nick works with? Why is there some of Canada shown?
Show them how the various ways of selecting a field work so they can guide respondents.
GT: should we ask respondents to create an account and log in?
Watch the years when people enter Cash Crop Growing Window; easy to accidentally enter 2026 for start and 2025 for end. Will muck up calendar view
If develop.covercrop-selector.org isn’t working or is loading slowly, use covercrop-selector.org though the data is only for NE and South.
Encourage people to scroll down to see everything on the cc info pages.
You can record the session and then fill in the Form immediately after the session. You won’t be able to go back to the same respondent’s data if you hop out of the Form. The next time you go to it, the Form will be blank again.
Next steps:
Eliz will send invite to Avik M for facilitator trainings
Eliz will send Cora invitation link for Thu facilitator training
Eliz will ask Nick S about Hawaii facilitator
Marguerite: see note to you and Shannon under Session 2 below.
Eliz will add to Facil Form: resp survey takes 5 min on avg
Questions to address:
There are still many problems and confusion. Should we put off testing for a few weeks to let developers clean things up? Example: the way the filter items highlight and the importance of hovering over the “?” to see what they mean. We could still train facilitators this week but ask them to schedule sessions starting the week of 4/21 instead of 4/14. That allows more time to find respondents, too.
04-02-2025
Session 1: Attending: Clint Mattox (Oregon), Victoria Ackroyd (facilitator), Juliet Norton, Shannon Mitchell, Marguerite Dibble, Elizabeth Seyler, who recorded it on Teams.
...
Good that Victoria prompted him to look for data source based on her own knowledge. Do you see anything on the page that may answer your question about data sources?
Good that Victoria first asked for general feedback, and if respondent didn’t see the filters, she prompted him to look at them.
Very helpful if respondent thinks out loud: “I’m not sure where to go or what to do. What will happen next?”
Good Victoria Q: Is there anything you can hover over that will help you understand?
Good redirect by V: Let’s redirect away from the data for now and return to thoughts on the design/page items.
V does good job managing the time
Ask whether any species are missing.
Tempting to ask all questions at once, but try to split into two or three questions, unless the respondent answers some on their own.
Add the four ecoregions to the question near end of Facil Form–ask which region they’re in? Are the regions already listed? I think so
Facil Form: Could delete “is there anything else you want us to know?” bc he will then be filling out a survey with the same info?...
DONE: Res Survey:
Q 16 and Q19 fix wording
Q 21 and Q 20 fix wording (or thereabouts)
When inviting respondents to a testing session, use Zoom or, if using Teams, be sure to use a laptop AND a monitor so that you may fill out the Facil Form while viewing the shared screen of respondent.
Shannon: provide more context? The script is there for support, not a hard guide. Do what you want to keep the session flowing. Can you tell me about what you’re thinking or trying or wanting? Then say “let’s try this” then “was that clear or not clear?” What’s your thought process right now? What are you looking for? What’s coming up for you?” Cheat sheet: here are some prompts you can use if conversation is dragging.
Victoria: likes the materials. Part of it is practice and some is the respondents themselves.
Silence is fine and good.
Reassure the respondent as they go–this is great feedback.
...
Elizabeth updating the Facilitator Brief and Facilitator Form to reflect mock testing discoveries.
Shannon and Marguerite will review said changes
Elizabeth will send materials to Nick before Monday meeting for review before mock testing that day
04-01-2025
Attending: Cora Rose Bobo-Shisler, Victoria Ackroyd, Shannon Mitchell, Marguerite Dibble, Elizabeth Seyler
Mock Facilitator Training
Shannon gives an overview of the purpose of testing.
Was it helpful to have the document in advance? - There was a bug opening the tool link in firefox
Facilitators should make sure to use the “Develop” link
Complete the facilitator form ahead of testing to walk through what that will feel like.
Elizabeth will update the form to ensure people can submit multiple responses
Cora didn’t realize how the browse cover crop flow worked, so mentioning that to other facilitators would be good.
Cora also glad to see how to get to the selected crops and the comparison view.
Cora will check about updates on recruiting & who will test
How to communicate the testers? → Email Marguerite & Elizabeth so we can have a tracker
This looks great! The way it’s laid out is very helpful, it answers so many of my questions for me. Excited to try for the mock test and see how it goes. The biggest part is the narrative and seeing how I approach interacting with people
encourage people to narrate their experience as they’re going through (added to the brief)
Based on how it goes with Victoria, we might make tweaks before the Monday testing.
Victoria may have small interruptions during the mock testing session.
Are their options to record sessions tomorrow? → we can, Elizabeth will
Cora would like to see how it looks → invited for tomorrow
04-07-2025
Marguerite’s Notes:
Make sure facilitators have done their own personal feedback process with the survey first / gotten familiar with the tool.
Prompt for asking people to start exploring and letting you know first impressions.
Can we do a good QA pass before testing officially starts?
Giving folks the options to record and go back to update their notes if they’re feeling like it’s hard to track everything (and noting the note taker / helper option again)