Hi Derek,
Thanks for your message, happy to share a few highlights here.
We conducted a series of unmoderated usability tests using loop11(http://www.loop11.com/) with the same course design using the Clean theme and the Snap theme with students who were mostly already familiar with Moodle. The tasks tested were the following:
- Locate the link to email the course instructor
- View your marks in the course so far
- Determine the weekly topics that will be covered in the course
- Locate the due date for the next upcoming assignment
- Read the description for the next upcoming assignment
- Review the overview for the current week's class
- Post a sentence to a discussion forum
Interestingly the task completion rates for both themes were similar, except that the task of viewing grades within Snap proved to be difficult and contacting the instructor the same in Clean.
The differences though came through with the qualitative feedback regarding the two themes; clean was (ironically) often referred to as being cluttered, with too much going on while Snap was more often referred to as being easy to learn/read and clean. Based on these results the recommendation was to proceed and use Snap for a live course and see how the theme performed during a course vs. isolated test tasks. Through the generosity of my client detailed test results were also shared with the Snap design team.
I hope you, and others, find the above information helpful.
Paul