If you're curious about usability testing for documentation:
Testing documentation is similar to a software usability test, but the
details are different. Effectively, you start with a general
description of what the documentation is ("this is a Readme file for
how to do X") and the tester identifies 3 to 5 things they would
expect to learn from that document. Then the tester reviews the
document and highlights the parts of the document that answer the 3 to
5 questions they started with. This can be a very effective way to
learn what information people are looking for, and how they expect to
find it in documentation.
For example, testers might be given a copy of the documentation saved
as a Google Doc. The testers would use the "highlight" and/or
"comment" features in Google Docs to do their highlighting.
Jim
On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 1:52 PM Jim Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Does anyone have documentation they would like to have tested for usability?
>
> I teach part-time at a university, and a colleague is looking for
> projects for his class to work on next semester (January through May).
> Specifically, he is interested in working with a project on
> documentation (this is not a software usability test - but a test of
> how easily real people can understand the documentation).
>
> Do you have documentation you'd like to have tested?
>
>
> Your responsibilities as a usability test "client":
>
> - You will respond to a written questionnaire about the documentation,
> including what the documentation is about (what program it is for),
> what readers are expected to learn from it (such as "how to use the
> program" or "how to compile from source code"), who the "audience" is
> for the documentation (for newbies, for more experienced users, for
> developers, etc) and a few things you would like to learn from the
> usability test.
>
> - My colleague (an instructor in the program) may also invite you to
> meet via video (Zoom) with his usability students to talk about the
> project.
>
> - You may also be invited to observe (via Zoom) a "test of the test"
> where a team of students perform a single-user usability test, and you
> provide feedback to the team about what you liked in that test, and
> what things they should do differently for the real test.
>
> - You will be invited to attend a video (Zoom) presentation of the
> student team's usability test results at the end of the semester.
>
> - You will likely be asked to read the usability test results report,
> and provide feedback on it (was it helpful, etc).
>
>
> Jim
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