Assignment DA311 User Testing
Link to OWinfo:
Feedback form:
What I did:
One of my goals was to extend my user testing and UFP skills, because there was no possibility to do user testing during the projects I did so far. Unless some mis communications between the team members we performed several user tests as you can read in our report. In addition I visited the IPO-building where they perform professional user tests daily. I also attended myself as subject for user tests, in order to become more knowledged with these kinds of tests.
What I learned:
From these visits I learned that in order to get relevant data, all the other parameters should be the same at every test. Besides, while testing it is that important that people can not influence each other, otherwise the outcome is not correct anymore.
The assignment enables me to gather relevant data of the user and the tested product. Thinking-aloud and Co-discovery are two useful techniques which can give a clear insight of the cognitive processes of the end-user while using a product. More information about these techniques can be read in our report on page 18. In addition, video recording and a questionnaire afterwards can also help to get relevant information about the cogitative processes of the user based on the product. I should also take care of a clear research question, a detailed list of criteria, good preparation and planning of the tests in advance. It will require more time than I thought before. Additionally, the test-evaluation requires quite a lot of time too. In the future I want to extend knowledge about different user testing techniques, in order to see what technique is the most relevant for a specific problem definition.
One of the main problems concluded of the first user test was the lack of feedback to the user. So our improved design should tackle this problem. Therefore I came up with the idea to use a paper prototype in order to see if this design is better than the original. You can see an example of my paper prototype over here and on page 14-16 of the report. I became aware that a paper prototype is a very effective way to test my design. It enables me to create an interaction with the user and the product and the other way around in relative short time. However it is not a complete match for the real look and feel of a product.
