Usability Testing

Recruit three people and perform usability testing on your product.

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).

Requirements

Getting Organized

Create the 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:

  • An explanation and introduction
  • Pre-test questions
  • Home page (main screen) tour
  • Task scenarios
  • Thank you and participant question opportunity

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.

This content will be written to a Markdown file named test-script.md saved in your usability-study folder in your project repository in Markdown format.

Recruiting

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.

Facilitating

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. Notes from each team member will be submitted to the usability-study folder in the format of [your first name]-notes.md. 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:

  • Questions to ask a participant
  • Ideas for changes to the next study

Usability studies can be done in-person or remotely.

Debriefing

Once you have completed your usabilitiy study, you need to meet with your team and discuss your findings. Create a report named debrief.md 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.

Submission

All documents will be saved to the usability-study folder in your repository which will include:

  • Your complete usability study script (test-script.md)
  • Notes taken by each team member when they were acting as an observer ([your first name]-notes.md)
  • Debriefing report (debrief.md)
    • Finding Summary
    • Ranked Issues
    • Brief resolution plan for each issue

Grade 10 points