You have successfully created a prototype of your customer’s product. It’s now time to to find out if your current design direction provides a usable experience. You will be following the usability testing guidelines presented in the RSME book.
While this is a simulation, make sure to carryout your study in a professional manner (especially if you are recruiting participants outside of the class).
You and your team members will look over the requested features your customer wants and the features you can test with your prototype and develop a list of at least 5 tasks. You will then convert each task into a scenario for the usability study as described in RSME Chapter 6.
Once you have your scenarios ready you will create a script for your usability study. You should use RSME Chapter 8 as a guide for your script as well as the sample script provided by the book (Sample Test Script and Consent Form chapter). You will find that not all of the wording or questions may be pertinant to your product, make adjustments as necessary. Minimally, you should include:
You will NOT need to do the consent form if a classmate agrees to be a participant for your study (as we all know the requirements and process). If you decide to use someone outside of class, you will need to provide a consent form for your participant(s), explain the process, and data you are collection thoroughly, and store the signed consent form in your repository.
With your script and scenarios ready, it’s time to find people to participate in your usability study. For this project you will find three people who are NOT in your developer OR customer groups. Ideally, your participants will be members of this class, but you can recruit outside of the class if you have friends, roommates, etc. willing to help. You will schedule a time to meet with these individuals before the project deadline.
When facilitating your usability studies, you will be expected to alternate between team members as observers and facilitators. If you have three team members, each member will facilitate one study. If you have two team members, one member will facilitate two studies. All observing team members will individually take a detailed notes during the study (these will be submitted to your project repository). Facilitators will be expected to ask probing questions to gain more insight and keep the participants talking out loud. Facilitators may take notes during the study using a notepad, but these notes will not be required to be submitted for the assignment. These notes may include:
Usability studies may be done in-person or remote, but in either situation, you will use the MS Teams screen sharing to record the session (audio only) and prototype window. Observers will join the Teams meeting muted and can only ask participants questions during probing questions.
Once you have completed your usabilitiy study, you need to meet with your team and discuss your findings. Create a report that summarizes your findings and create a ranked list of the issues with a brief description of how you plan to resolve each issue. Focus on the method outlined in RSME Chapter 10.
You will create a folder in your repository named usability-study-01 which will include: