In-Class Activity: User Testing

Want your users to fall in love with your designs? Fall in love with your users. — Dana Chisnell

Letting potential users interact directly with your project early and often, while changes can still be made, is a vital part of the iterative process of ensuring software is actually useful. User feedback can be ambiguous or even contradictory, so deciding how to respond to the feedback will likely require a discussion (or, in the real world, a decision with your client).

Submitting your Work

In this activity, you will take on two different roles that have very different goals:

• Facilitator: get feedback from users while they attempt to learn the topic of your Learning Experience
• User: complete the given tasks while trying to think aloud, i.e., verbalizing your thoughts as you interact with the Learning Experience

Individually, use this shared Google Doc to take notes for each role.

Specifications

Conduct a User Test of your Learning Experience project with at least two students within the class (and, later, with at least two students outside the class).

Take a turn being both a facilitator and a user:

• Facilitator: stays with a computer to record feedback from users, while saying as little as possible (let the user figure out how things work)
• User: visits another project and tries learn something, while talking about it as much as possible (such as any issues you have doing or finding something, any bugs, or anything you especially like)

During the test, each person should work to provide as realistic an experience as possible:

• Facilitator: only answer specific questions from users, but do not to explain how to do something specific
• User: try to think aloud while you work (the goal is to keep a running stream of consciousness as you work)

After the test, each person should take turns asking for more details or discussing what they learned:

• Facilitator: ask for clarifications about anything that came up during the test
• User: give general impressions of the project (especially first impressions and what worked well)

Finally, individually, think about how to address any issues that came up that do not have an obvious solution (i.e., not bug fixes or simple changes). Updating your project based on user feedback is the last deliverable.