Week 7: Usability Test Pilot

This week I have spent my time preparing to begin usability testing.  I created several more screens for the prototype earlier in the week and polished the testing task list after meeting with Robin and Tanya to get some feedback.  Wednesday, I conducted a pilot test in person but also shared it over Live Meeting to another laptop so that I could gauge quality and response times.  The unfortunate thing is that since it's video streaming live over the Internet, there is some lag, so even if I am allowed to record my remote testing sessions, they won't pick up everything.  I have some concerns about being both facilitator and note taker during these tests but it will be good experience.  Below is an excerpt from the pilot test demonstrating what I thought was the most flawed part of my prototype:


Overall the pilot went very, very well. It look just under 50 minutes and the participant was able to complete all tasks. I got some great feedback about changing some of the wording and breaking up one of the tasks into two tasks. I found some broken hotspots within the prototype as well. Most importantly, I discovered an entire interaction missing from the prototype, as demonstrated by the video. I went back and created a way for participants to be able to use either the folder tree or the folder grid when attempting to select a single content item. Since I proposed to allow users to navigate folders and channels using the folder grid, that needs to be functional from the beginning screen of this task—it will be valuable to see how many users choose to use the tree versus the grid upon first being presented with this picker layout. I can't believe I almost didn't include that! (Participants could hide the tree in order to use the grid as I explain in the video, but that will not give me the testing data I need in the most accurate way.)

My prototype is up to 116 screens :/ I just didn't realize the differences in doing true interaction design for a piece of software versus wireframing for a website—I'm learning that these are two unique tasks with their own separate needs so I am glad for the experience. I still might make another tweak to my overall design again based on the pilot. I haven't decided whether a single click to a folder in the tree should display the contents of that folder in the grid, or if that should remain a double-click.

I've scheduled most of my test participants over the coming weeks, starting with two iSchool students next week followed by two OpenText employees the week after. Following that initial round of testing, I will make adjustments to the test plan and prototype before conducting tests with real OpenText customers the last week of March.