Assignment #5: Usability Study

Overview

This assignment will demonstrate your ability to experience websites through the eyes of real users. Furthermore, you'll build on your problem-solving skills to suggest how that experience could be improved.

Throughout the semester, you'll be developing these skills. Applying this mentality will help you find weak points in your work (so you can be a better designer).

Due date

This is due by your section's class time on Feb. 22 or 23, 2015 (in other words, W6D1 in your section)

Points possible

150

Steps to take:

Watch this video.

Next pick a local website to test. No need to try to pick one with huge problems — you'll find issues with any site. This doesn't need to be a journalism site.

Make a list of reasons people would visit that site on their own, then break those down into three tasks your participants will attempt to complete. Write scenarios around those tasks that you'll print out and hand to the participant.

This must be a local site — something that's in business within 50 miles of Columbia.

Recruit three participants. They can be students/friends, but not people from this class. Do the test in a place they feel comfortable, preferably on their own computer.

I suggest you make an audio recording of the tests. It allows you to focus on observing the process and keeping the test moving, without being concerned that you'll miss something. But if you have faith in your note-taking skills and multitasking and want to wing it, that's fine.

First, get the participants talking. It may help to follow Krug's script found here (PDF download)

Find out participants' age and job. Have them describe to you their Internet usage — what they mostly do online, and how many hours per day or week they typically spend. Make sure they understand there aren't right or wrong answers, and that they're doing you (and the site) a favor. Then show them the home page and ask them to tell you what they think the purpose of the site is, what they'd likely click on and why, if anything confuses them, etc. They're not clicking at this point, just looking around and thinking out loud. Use your interview skills to stay neutral, not guiding their answers or experience.

Then, give them the three tasks to do. Hand them the scenario you typed up. Each task should take at least a few steps (not just a one-click answer). Record where they seem to get confused, how long the task takes them, what observations they have along the way. Avoid having them use the search option.

After they're done with the tasks, go through your notes and see if anything needs followup.

Turn this in:

Note: This file is what you'll turn in. As you go through the steps below, you'll see that there's a spot for almost everything in that file. So fill that out and you're ok.

1. A short description of the site (including a url, of course). Tell me why you chose it and how you guess most people use it. 5 POINTS

2. Your tasks/scenarios: The same for each participant. 10 POINTS

3. Completed Usability Report Summary form. 60 POINTS

This includes:

• Demographic info: gender, age, profession, average time per week using the Internet and most common tasks performed online.
• The operating system and browser, including versions, used for the test.
• Observations from your notes: home page observations, task one, task two, etc. Include the time it took to complete each task, and any issues that came up.

4. A synthesis of the three tests, describing the top three to five problems you'd recommend as needing attention, based on the three sessions. Address how these problems could be fixed. 50 POINTS

5. A report, in the form of a letter to be given to the organization, written conversationally and in a way that will not provoke defensiveness. Make it clear you didn't choose their site because it had problems, but because ___________ (whatever made you choose it). Summarize what you asked users to do and what you found. Use screenshots to illustrate your points. 25 POINTS

Note: Assignments not turned in by deadline will drop a letter grade for each day late.