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Request for Approval under the “Federal Student Aid User Experience Design Research Generic Clearance” (OMB Control Number: 1845-0159)

5 Day Fast Track Clearance

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION:

Digital & Customer Care Platform & Services Design Research Screener Question Pool 2

PURPOSE: The goal of this pool of screening questions is to provide options for Federal Student Aid (FSA) designers to select appropriate candidates for 1-on-1 user research interviews and moderated usability testing. The Next Gen initiative at FSA involves the redesign of every digital customer touchpoint. In order to ensure that redesign remains human-centered, FSA is seeking frequent feedback from small groups of users (3-6) on prototypes throughout development. No user of this screener is expected to complete all questions. Instead, a subset of approximately 25 questions will be selected from the pool in order to minimize the burden on respondents. The particular makeup of the screener will depend on the stage of development. Currently, for example, Next Gen is currently focusing on borrowers in default, deferment, and forbearance. Use of a small number of screener questions from the pool below will allow us to target this subgroup of borrowers for follow-up. No contact information or answers will be kept longer than is necessary to match users with appropriate interview or testing sessions, and contact information is only used for scheduling purposes.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS: Parents, students, and borrowers who are considering or have already accepted federal student aid, including loans, grants, and work-study. This includes respondents across the lifecycle of student aid, from consideration of aid, to application for aid through the FAFSA form, to acceptance of aid, and finally to the repayment of loans.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [ ] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[X ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software [ ] Small Discussion Group

[] Focus Group [ ] Other: ______________________

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name: Tait Chamberlain (312-395-0473)__________________________________________

To assist review, please provide answers to the following question:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [ ] Yes [ X] No

2. If Yes, is the information that will be collected included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ ] No

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [ X ] No

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Individuals	2000	6 min	200 hours
Totals	2000	6 min	200 hours

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is _____$0.00_____

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [ ] Yes [ X] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

We will send an e-mail invitation to those who have self-identified that they are interested in participating in usability testing to improve the student aid experience. Participants will self-identify through a survey on studentaid.gov. In addition, we will reach out through social media channels, conference attendees and through advocacy organizations to recruit participants across the student aid lifecycle.

 

We will conduct moderated, online usability tests that can be completed by any person to whom we send an e-mail invitation. Respondents will be asked to complete tasks that users would typically complete when using  studentaid.gov  through a series of scenarios. Participants will be asked to verbalize their thoughts about what they are doing as they complete a task/scenario. There will be no more than 10 tasks to complete in a single study.  Tasks are completed by finding a specific page in the hierarchy of the website where participants  believe they have found the information that they are looking for. The last part of the test includes optional questions that prompt users to provide brief verbal commentary about the features that they have interacted with during the usability test and their opinions about how they reached the page. Each test should take no longer than 60-minutes to complete.

 

We expect to get about 30 responses and not more than 200 responses. There is no need for us to personally select individual participants via a sampling plan or otherwise.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[ X ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[ ] Telephone

[ ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [ ] Yes [ X ] No

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