CSC 360

Spring 2015

Craig Miller

Weekly Notes

Assignments

Technical References

Team Project 3
Usability Testing
Due Friday May 22 before 11:30pm

Overview

For the third installment of the team project, you will conduct a usability test with paper prototypes or HTML-based prototypes. Your test should involve at least four test participants. You will then revise the design to address any usability problems you observed during the tests.

Test Roles

Rettig mentions several roles that team members can play while conducting a test: greeter, facilitator, computer, and observers. You will find descriptions of these roles in his article, "Prototyping for Tiny Fingers." Mathis also describes the computer and the facilitator on page 104. To carry our your test, assign members of your team to these roles. For small groups, you will need to consolidate some of the roles. For example, the greeter and the facilitator is often the same person. While not ideal, it is possible to conduct the test with just one practitioner.

Test Design

In your last assignment, you describe testing scenarios for your designs. For this assignment, you should develop the testing procedure for these scenarios. We will discuss tests and conduct pilot runs in class. The text and the Rettig article also provides some suggestions.

Write out your instructions to the participant and decide in advance when and if you will intervene while the test is running. We will discuss how to write good instructions in class.

Evaluation Process

When conducting each test, make sure you do the following:
  1. Obtain the informed consent of each participant.
  2. Make the participant feel comfortable and ensure that he or she is not being tested.
  3. Follow your test script and read your instructions.
  4. Observers should record the user's actions that are relevant to your testing scenarios.
  5. When the test is over, thank the participant and answer any questions.

The Report

Your report should include the following sections.

  • Executive summary. This summary is a one-to-two paragraph summary describing the test, its results and changes made to your design.
  • Test Plan. This is a couple of paragraphs describing how you conducted your test.
  • Results Summary. This section summarizes the major issues that you learned from the test. It may include a list of issues.
  • Redesign summary. This section describes and motivates the changes you made to your designs. You may want to include and refer to screen shots when presenting your changes.
  • Appendix: Test materials. This final section is really an appendix consisting of the details and materials you used to conduct the usability test. It has the following documents:
    • Team Member Roles. List your team members and specify the roles they play. If they vary from the descriptions provided by Rettig, explain them.
    • Consent document. Document how each participant consented to participate in your test.
    • Instructions. Provide the script of instructions that are read to each participant.
    • Detailed Results. Provide your documentation of the detailed results. It should include an organized set of notes from the usability tests.
    • Also provide a description of how team members contributed to this project in addition to their test roles.

Submission

Submit your report to D2L. PDF files are preferred, but any common format (e.g. Word) is acceptable.

Grading

This project is worth 20 points. The following criteria will be used for scoring the report:

  • Report organization and presentation. The report is well written and organized so that it is easy to find required information.
  • Report completeness. The report has all required contents. You are strongly encouraged to review all requirements on this page before you submit your report.
  • Process. The report documents usability test process.
  • Supported findings. The revisions are clearly based on the results from the usability test.