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RedFest 2026 Winner

SYRIOS · UH UX Lab

Testing a 2,000-year-old story with 11 real people.

SYRIOS is a digital humanities project about the coins of ancient Syria. Its team built an interactive timeline in ClioVis and needed to know if people could actually use it. We ran moderated usability tests across 7 audience types, and the study won first place at RedFest 2026.

Scope
Usability testing
Moderated sessions
SEQ + SUS surveys
Synthesis
Role
UX Researcher
Timeline
Spring 2026
Visit syrios.uh.edu
Award
RedFest 2026 · 1st place, UX Research Artifact
Team
Celeste Ahn, Samantha Freeman, Daniela Hernandez Videa, Zeina Santina, Kelly Ung, Bianca Viteri · with REACH (Sophia Mata, Sarah Rantala)

Background

A timeline full of kings, events and coins, never tested with real people.

Before investing more, the team needed to know where people got stuck, and if ClioVis worked better for building content or for showing it.

Can students, teachers and experts find their way through 300 years of coins?

Method

11 testers, 7 audience types, 10 tasks each.

We timed every task, noted what people did and said, and had them rate each task and the whole system.

  • K-12 teacher ×3
  • High school student ×2
  • Middle school student
  • Museum professional
  • Hobbyist ×2
  • Historian
  • Subject matter expert
Observation · Time on task · SEQ · SUS

Findings

Four places people got lost.

Testers clicked only Military, expecting it to single out military events

01 · The biggest issue

Filtering worked backwards.

Everyone clicked "Military" to see military events. Instead, clicking hides a category. It was the hardest, slowest task of all: 4.0 ease, about 77 seconds.

The Seleucid kings path through the timeline

02

Connections between kings were hard to follow.

Colors, arrows and crowded areas made people guess instead of following the line with confidence.

Coin metadata panel with the Reverse Legend field

03

Coin details hid behind jargon.

"Reverse Legend" meant little to non-experts, and the glossary opened in a new tab, pulling people out of the timeline.

The era title card on the timeline, which testers didn't know was clickable

04

Clickable things didn't look clickable.

Testers missed that the era title card opens a description, and many never zoomed in.

"It's just kind of backwards from what you would hope."Subject matter expert, on filtering

Results

Above-average usability, with clear weak spots.

77.3Average SUS · benchmark is 68
6.9/7Easiest task · open an event
4.0/7Hardest task · filtering

SUS score by tester

68 benchmark
  1. T1
  2. T2
  3. T3
  4. T4
  5. T5
  6. T6
  7. T7
  8. T8
  9. T9
  10. T10
  11. T11

Time on task (seconds, approx.)

  1. Q1
  2. Q2
  3. Q3
  4. Q4
  5. Q5
  6. Q6
  7. Q7
  8. Q8
  9. Q9
  10. Q10
"Overall, it's pretty intuitive."Museum professional
"Looking for the precise number is very difficult."K-12 teacher

Recommendations

Five changes to make the timeline harder to get lost in.

  1. A "how to" guideA short pop-up the first time someone arrives.
  2. Round coin iconsSo coins stand out from events at a glance.
  3. Limit zoom-outKeep the view where the events are.
  4. A legendShapes and colors explained in one place.
  5. "Reset view"A way back when people get lost.
View more workGrupo Videas

Contact

Let's Work Together!

Currently open to work together

danielavidea11@gmail.com

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