You've got the right approach. After the open ended part of the session, you'll know whether the widget stands out enough to be noticed on it's own merit.
Then stop and ask whether the test participant ever does 'x' where x is the thing that the new widget does. 'x' is not the widget name, only the essence of what it does... After you establish whether 'x' is interesting, then ask them now to do 'x'. If they still cannot find it, that's a problem. After that even if you have them repeat things that the widget does, it's often good to see if they use it as designed and understand it or if they just got lucky on the first try. Best of luck, Ron Ron Perkins, Principal DesignPerspectives.com Usability and Interaction Design Consulting -----Original Message----- From: krushford [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 11:50 AM To: pendar Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Usability Testing Challenge Hello, I work on similar usability labs and my task lists always start with some exploratory tasks. Even if they may do some of the widget related tasks during that period, I would still ask the specific tasks associated with the goals of the widget. Hope that helps and good luck! Kaden On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:21 AM, pendar <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > I am a UI designer for a start up company and I'm conducting a > usability test for our web product for the first time. > > 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. > > The product we are testing is a web widget which is going to be > integrated in other websites (blogs, portals, etc.). We have a working > prototype where we have embedded the widget in a fully functional > mocked-up website. > > 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 > > The success of the product largely depends on the first point. The > problem is that its almost impossible to write tasks for that. > > 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. > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe > ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines > ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help > .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.552 / Virus Database: 270.10.25/1957 - Release Date: 2/17/2009 7:07 AM ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
