Hi Pendar,
I've read a few books including "handbook of usability testing"
and "a practical guide to usability testing", and I've read a ton
of resources online.
I am so psyched that you've read Handbook of Usability Testing. I hope
it was the second edition. I was one of the authors. (Oh gawd, I hope
I give you good advice.)
We are interested in testing two things:
1- Whether or not people will notice our widget at all and will
interact with it
2- Knowing what the widget is, how easily can they use the features
the widget offers
These are great questions. Setting up an exploratory test is exactly
what I would do.
So I have designed the test to have 2 parts: in the first part, I
want to give the user about 10 minutes to free-roam the website, and
think-out-loud, to see how long it would take for them to notice the
widget. I also want to observe how long it will take for them to
interact with the feature, and see if they understand (and use) the
features of the widget on their own.
In part 2, I will give them particular tasks related to features of
the widget and see how well they can interact with the UI (if they
haven't figured out by now what the widget is, I will tell them)
The only issue is, they might have already done some of the tasks in
part 2 when they were free-roaming in part 1, and I'm not sure how
to handle that.
So, for the usability experts here, do you think this is a good
approach? I would definitely appreciate your advice and comments.
If your participants do the tasks that you have in mind for part 2 in
part 1 without your prompting them, I'd say your site and widget are
really successful. Don't try to force-fit the test. Go with the flow.
If that happens, you're still finding out what you want to know, which
I think are these hidden questions (tell me if I'm wrong):
Is the idea of the widget useful?
Is it in the right place to be found?
Do people understand what it is when they see it?
Is the call to action of the widget strong enough that people click
through?
I hope you've recruited participants who are motivated to do what you
want to observe -- that is, they've demonstrated somehow that they've
done something before that is related to what you're exploring in this
test, or they've volunteered a desire for the feature that the widget
offers.
Although you're talking about "how long it takes," I would think twice
about actually timing people for this test. Time won't tell you a lot
at this point. Might be better to track what participants click on
their way to interacting with the widget. That data can help you think
about where to position the widget or entry points to it. Also, if
you're asking people to think aloud, talking will slow them down (not
necessarily a bad thing). I've written about this in the blog that
accompanies Handbook of Usability Testing, here: http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/2007/04/when-to-ask-participants-to-think-out.html
Hope this helps. Let us know how it turns out.
Dana
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
Dana Chisnell ~ Be good. UsabilityWorks.
desk: 415.392.0776
mobile: 415.519.1148
dana AT usabilityworks DOT net
www.usabilityworks.net
http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/
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