The purpose of this assignment is to give you the experience of conducting a usability test and presenting your findings in a report.

You will do this assignment in groups of 3 or 4. Once formed, give your team a distinctive name. This name could be related to what you’ll be testing, or as simple as a word containing the first letters of all team members’ names. One representative from each team must email Maggie and Meena with a list of team members and a 1- to 2-sentence description of your test focus.

What to do:

1) Decide what you’d like to test. You’ll be conducting a simple user test of an information system, such as a website or application. Pick something you can test easily without a lot of extra effort. If you want, you may use your major project as the subject of this test, but whatever you choose, there must be at least a working interactive prototype. (Early mock-ups, paper prototypes, etc., will not suffice.)

2) Create a test guide. As a group, develop 2-4 tasks. These tasks should be not too difficult but not too easy. Difficult tasks make for complicated testing; easy tasks don’t give interesting results. Order your tasks into a brief script, and be open to adjusting them as you test and learn. Besides the tasks script, here are other details to include in your guide:

• Test logistics (times, locations, team roles)
• Target participant criteria
• Testing goals and questions

3) Recruit 3-4 users and schedule a separate test for each. Put another way, recruit as many people as are on your team, ensuring that each of has an opportunity to moderate a test. Consider desirable recruiting criteria. Would it be better to test someone with a particular skill-level or familiarity with this technology or domain? Would recruiting from a certain demographic or behavioral profile (age group, profession, gamer, etc.) give you more useful feedback? Feel free to recruit from among your classmates, friends, or family for this assignment.

4) Define team roles. Allocate roles within your team for each test. You will need:

• 1 moderator
• 1-2 note-takers
• 1-2  session recorders
  

For each test session, team members should take turns assuming different roles. Ensure everyone has a chance to moderate at least one test.

IMPORTANT: If you are testing a working prototype or application designed or built by someone on the team, it’s generally undesirable for this to person moderate a test due to personal bias and conflict of interest. For the purpose of this exercise, however, all members should moderate regardless. Your post-test personal reflection offers a great opportunity to capture any thoughts you have about this.

5) Conduct your tests! Conduct a usability test for each of your two recruited users. These will be think-aloud tests, meaning that the user will talk through what he or she is doing and why. It’s not always second-nature for people to do this. For an especially quiet testers, moderators can drop occasional reminders to speak what’s on their mind. The moderator can also ask clarifying questions, but cannot help the user complete tasks.

6) Record each test (audio and, optionally, video). This need not be a very sophisticated setup; you can use the video camera on a digital camera or smartphone.

Submit this assignment in 3 parts:

1. A written report from the team, consisting of:

• a cover sheet with a paragraph describing what each team member contributed to this assignment
• a succinct description of what you tested,
• your test guide
• a brief results section summarizing:
  • areas, features, etc., that the users liked or found helpful
  • problems the users experienced, and
  • recommendations resulting from your tests

NOTE: Write this as you would to any client who has hired you, keeping in mind that you are evaluating something that your client put a lot of work into. Include quotes from users and screenshots of problem areas to illustrate and support your points. Organize your report by topic, and make it clear what you’ve determined are the most important problems and recommendations.

2. Also from the team, a video clip or audio clip paired with still screenshots or photos to illustrate 1 or 2 main points of your report. Try to keep this under 3 minutes. It doesn’t have to be particularly polished-looking. iMovie or Windows Movie Maker will work fine.

3. From each individual team member, a 1-2 page reflection on the process and experience. Briefly describe what you learned from this assignment.

We’ll view and discuss a sampling of student videos in class.