Test users will feel under pressure. Knowing that they are being observed and recorded increases anxiety. Test users will make errors.
Here's some useful things to consider which I picked up from looking at Rubin & Chismell's Handbook Of Usability Testing and Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen:
Make test users feel as comfortable as possible.
Make clear to users it is the system being measured, not them.
Make clear to users no information will be revealed - Everything is confidential.
All test users should remain anonymous.
Inform them they can stop the test at any time.
Minimise the number of observers.
Ensure you've answered all their questions before you start the test.
How to achieve this:
Environment should be comfortable/quiet
Serve refreshments
Make sure everything is ready before hand i.e. computer, hand-outs, recording devices...
It's time to prepare what I need for testing an existing website (Sainsbury's) with real people. It's not enough to show people pictures of a website, because you won't get what they think of the usability, only on it's appearance. So here's what I will need to do to carry out a test with real users and a working site:
A consent form to have the user's permission to use the recordings from the testing. Here's what I'll be using:
Participant Consent Form
User-Centered Design – Task Analysis
By signing this form I agree to participate in this research and understand:
This agreement is of my own free will
I have had the opportunity to ask any questions about the study
I realise that I may withdraw from the study at any time without giving a reason
I have been given full information regarding the aims of the research
All personal information provided by myself will remain confidential and no information that identifies me will be made publically available
A background questionnaire - So when looking at the results you can deduct why the results turned out a certain way by looking at the person's backround information. This is the questionnaire I will be giving my users:
Age:__________
Gender:M/F
Income:
0 – 15K__________
15 – 25K__________
25 – 40K__________
40K +__________
Computer skills:
Terrible
Not Very Good
Good
Very Good
How Often Do You Shop Online?
Never
Hardly
Once A Month
Once A Week
Everyday
Do You Shop At Online Supermarkets?Yes/No
If Yes, Do You Shop With The Online Supermarkets That Do Delivery?Yes/No
A script of what I should read to each user before doing the test, which explains what they need to do. A script is used so each user is given exactly the same information. This is my script:
Thank you for agreeing to participate in this usability study today. I will be working from this script to ensure that my instructions to everyone who participates in the study are the same. The aim of the study is to observe how people shop online using a supermarket website. This session will be recorded so I have a back-up of how each study went and so I can look back at them for further analysing. In this study you will be given a simple task of buying a few items on a supermarket website. This isn't a test on you, it is a test on how easy the website is to use. You will start the task from the website's homepage. As you work through the task, say aloud what you are doing or thinking. For example, if you are clicking a button, say which one you are clicking and why. e.g. "I'm looking for bread so I'm clicking on the bakery button." At the end of the task I will ask you some questions about the website. You've read through the task and the information that is needed for it. Are there any questions before we begin?
The task problem. I will be giving the user a sheet of what they need to do and any information they will need to use to do it. Here is what it will say:
Task Analysis Problem
You would like to buy some items from an online supermarket site and have them delivered to your home.
The 5 items you require are:
Bread (wholemeal, unsliced);
Milk (semi-skimmed, 2 pints, organic);
Red wine (price limit £5.00);
Spaghetti 500g (price check);
Tin tomatoes (chopped).
I will also supply the following details, in order for the user to get up to the purchasing stage, of which need to be different for each test user:
Name
Address
Card Details
Video/audio device to record the session and something to make notes with
Debrief questionnaire. Questions will be asked verbally and this session will also be recorded. Here are the questions I will be asking:
Task Analysis Questionnaire
1)What were your general first impressions of the site?
2)How easy did you find it to locate the items on the shopping list?
3)Were there any particular problems you encountered when using the site?
4)Were there any features of the site that you found difficult to use?
5)Were there any features of the site that behaved in unexpected ways?
6)Were there any features you would like to have seen on the site that were not available?
Here is a scenario of where a user may want to buy some bread online. I've used the Sainsbury's website and gone through each motions myself, so I can see what a user is faced with. I've shown a screen grab of what I did, step-by-step:
I've gone from the home page - groceries - bread - white - added to trolley - checked out - checked post code - registered - checked out - selected delivery time - sorted payment method
I now need to identify some common tasks that people would do on a supermarket website. Here's a list of what I found from looking around some existing sites:
Here is a list of some of the things that determine usability:
Easy to learn
Efficiency
Effective to use
Safe to use
Allows users to do what they want to do (good utility)
Easy to remember how to use
If these usability goals are met, they can lead to achieving the user experience goals. Here's a list of things we'd like our products to be:
Fun
Emotionally fulfilling
Rewarding
Supportive of creativity
Aesthetically pleasing
Motivating
Helpful
Entertaining
Enjoyable
Satisfying
If any of these goals are achieved, it will increase the chances of the user using your product again and perhaps encouraging other people to do the same.
Principles For Usable Design
From looking at 'The Design of Everyday Things' by Don Norman, I've summarised his chapter on 'User-Centered Design', which includes some very important principles which will help greatly when designing.
Principles to follow when going about a task:
Use both knowledge that you already have in your head and form the world around you
Simplify the tasks which the user will need to do - don't make them think too much about it!
Make things visible: Make the outcome of an intended action obvious. ( e.g. If you want a home button, you put it somewhere that the user can see it and make it look the way a user would expect it to look, so they know that if they wanted to get back to the home page, that's the button they need to click! They will be expecting that button to perform that action - so make it obvious that it does what they want.)
Response compatibility. Similar to No.3 - Make sure the user knows what the effects of an action will be. Such as, what would happen if they clicked a certain button? And that they can determine what's there for their benefit and what's there as a necessity.
Use constraints to help you! They can make the user do what you want them to do and what they want to do, by constraining their options, leaving them no choice but to do what's there. This can save them a lot of time by getting straight to the point, which they'd appreciate.
Design for error. Always plan for a way of recovering from an unwanted outcome. So if the user goes somewhere they didn't intent on going, give them a way of getting out of there and to the place they wanted to go. Even better, make it hard for the user to get in a situation like that in the first place!
When all else fails, standardise! If you can't avoid creating something that's different, then standardise is, so the user only has to learn how to use it once and won't have a problem when using it the next time!
Ten Usability Heuristics
I've also found this list of useful rules, by Jakob Nielsen, some of which cover what Norman was saying:
Visibility of system status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
This model is quite a traditional one that focuseson more of the technical side of what's being done. It labels the design process, but in a very simplified way, which is practically common sense. This model shows very little consideration to the user. It shows mostly what the designer thinks and because the designer is the one creating the product, they get to know their work very well, so what might seem very simple to use and look nice to them, can be completely different for the user, who has never used this product before. If however, the processes could be done in a way where they can interact with not just one other process, then it would be less restricting and if the processes could involve steps that involve what should be done for the users, then that would make this model much more beneficial.
User-Centered System Design
Here, you can see that the UCSD model does include the user, which is obvious from its title. This is why I think this is the better model for me to use. I am creating a website and the way the users feel when they use it, is extremely important. This is a very iterative process,which allows me to keep fine-tuning my developments so I end up with a good website with lots of results and research to back up all the reasons on the way the site looks and functions.
