-
Tips on Recruiting Users
- Find people with the same experience level as the typical user.
- Dont get people who are familiar with the product or your views on the product.
- Be careful about friends and family testing.
- Public places like libraries, dining halls, coffee shops can be good places to find people who wouldn’t mind helping for a few minutes.
- Some companies have user testing labs that they set up and they handle recruiting users.
- In academia, we often post fliers or set up agreements with local organizations
- A small budget to give out gift certificates or something can help. People like reimbursement for their time
-
Realistic Situations
- Find a quiet distraction free room for user testing.
- Optionally audio or video record the user tests.
- Where it will be used -- need similar environment to where it will be used?
-
Tips on User Instructions:
- Tell Users:
- You are testing a piece of software ... not them
- Its ok for them to stop at anytime. How to handle scenario where people leave?
- Demonstrate equipment that users will need to use -- unless equipment is what you are testing. Example an occulus or three-D headset.
-
Tips on Tasks:
- The tasks are the ones developed in the previous milestone
- For user testing rephrase as "you"
-
Think Aloud Protocol:
- Asking the users to think aloud as they are working.
- Explain why -- rich info source for you
- You may need to model it once for them
- May also want to get them to practice once with an unrelated task.
-
Observer --> what to do?
Capture the users behavior
- What they do
- Thoughts behind it <-- especially
-
Lack of intuitiveness for user. Listen for ____???
- I am looking for...
- I am guessing that...
- I am confused...
- Oh so this is the ...
-
When test subject clams up...
- Prompt them...want to get them talking:
- Can you tell me what you're thinking
- Can you tell me why you clicked on x
-
Providing Help...
You cannot provide help
- Tell users you will not help them when doing the initial explanation of the test.
- User questions...they should ask them anyway. Observers should note these and answer them after test is over.
- Some cases you can intercede...know when ahead of time. example user not making progress for 3 minutes.
-
Evaluation of Results...What to go after:
You should find lots of problems --> what to go after
- Importance -- is this a nit, a minor hurdle or a complete showstopper, in terms of users completing tasks.
- Difficulty -- is this an easy fix or a major rewrite... major rewrite comes in to play in hi-fi prototypes...lo-fi you should be able to throw it away relatively easily.
-
Stages of prototyping
- Paper prototyping -- can people complete task? cheap at this point to fix.
- Digital prototyping --which tasks are the most problematic per cost to change? --timing errors etc.
- Deployed Beta -- bug reports, complaints...real world scenarios...more variable data.
-
Involve the user in brainstorming.
Ask them questions, open ended, to give improvements for the product or application after test is completed.
- "How would you make the application better?".
- "Can you think of anything that needs to be added?"
|
|
