Today@Dal

We invite you to take part in a study being conducted by researchers at Dalhousie University to learn how to develop a more engaging and informative online mortgage calculator. We are looking for input and feedback on initial prototypes that incorporate greater interactivity and use of visualizations, intended to both simplify the calculator's use and provide greater flexibility over existing options.

During a one-hour session, you will be asked to meet with researchers to take part in an exploratory activity where you will use a prototype mortgage calculator to perform some common tasks, and then discuss your thoughts on the experience. The findings from this study will be used to develop guidelines for creating engaging and usable visualizations intended for casual users in financial and other domains, and may drive improvements in the designs of commercial mortgage calculator web sites. This work is being funded by NSERC (the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada), in conjunction with our private-sector partner, HomeZilla.

We are looking for recent home buyers, whether this was your first purchase or one of several, and also people who have been through the mortgage renewal process. Participants must have used mortgage calculators before or have been through the process of choosing a mortgage plan in past. Over the course of the study, we will use feedback from participants to evolve the prototypes and will invite those who are interested in participating in multiple sessions to return at different stages to view and comment on each of the prototype designs. You may choose to participate in a single session, or as many as three. The first sessions will take place on December 17-20, and the remaining sessions early in January.

Study sessions will be conducted in a quiet meeting room either on the Dalhousie University campus or in downtown Halifax, whichever is more convenient for you. The entire session is expected to take about 60 minutes, and you will be compensated with $20 for your participation. If you are interested in participating, please contact Michael Hackett by email at michael.hackett@dal.ca.