User Testing and Maintainable Designs

Teams Standups

• Come up with a list of experiences on usability issues that you’ve had on different sites. Take some time to navigate around if you need to remember from past experiences
• Discuss and try to generate between 5 and 10 things that have gotten in the way of something you were trying to achieve

In Class Usability Test

Participants

• 1 Volunteer to be the test subject
• 4 Volunteers to represent the dev team

Process

Note that the test subject isn’t normally sitting infront of a whole classroom

1. Introduction & Consent Process
2. Walkthrough of the home page
3. Test Tasks
4. Wrap up
5. Team debrief (in figjam)
   • Team to discuss issues they saw the user run into
   • Note the percieved severity of the issue(s)
   • Brainstorm potential fixes

How to Conduct a Usability Test

Key Takeaways and Final Notes

• Test often and prioritize small focused tests over big tests
• Use usability testing to discover problems before they are too difficult to fix
• Don’t get defensive and fight the urge to explain the interface to your test subjects
• Whenever possible, get as many of your teammates to participate as observers
• Take time to debrief as soon after the test as possible

Student Led Usability Tests

The rest of class will provide you with opportunities to conduct usability tests. Feel free to use your own or any other sites. By the end of the day, you should have conducted and debriefed from 2-3 tests.

Preparations

• In your scrum group, decide on 2-3 sites to test
• Determine your roles (tester, test subject, observers (devs, designers))
• Test subject should not be present for the task question planning
• Pick the tasks that you want your user to test

The Test

• Follow the pattern noted above

Debrief

• For the debrief, any member of the team can host it
• Test Subjects can meet in the test subject area and debrief on their experiences as well