The Usability class in which the IRB usability project was conducted taught me everything I know about usability testing and gave me a hands-on opportunity to conduct a real usability test on a real website for a real client.
During the first portion of the semester, we focused on actually learning what usability testing is. I confess I had no idea whatsoever what usability testing was before I began the class. Through class lectures and reading Usability Testing and Research by Carol Barnum, I learned that usability testing is a system evaluation of a production based on the observation of the interaction of everyday users with the product. I learned that much prior planning was required in order to even begin the test.
This project was a huge project. It would take the entire class the whole semester just to complete on time. This would have been a complete communication fiasco if we had not split up the class into three groups: the testing group, the writing and editing group, and the sponsor and participant management group. These three groups were created in order to simplify the delegation of tasks and allow everyone in the class to specialize in a few aspect s of the project. These groups helped the project very much. Also, because we were usually collaborating with the same people everyday, we were able to get to know our group members very well, which increased our communication of information and made the class fun. Furthermore, each group had a team leader, which led their group and coordinated with Dr. Barker and the other team leaders.
Fortunately, I was placed within the Testing Group of the IRB website usability test, the group I had applied for. I wanted to be in this group because I wanted to actually conduct the tests in the usability lab and use the equipment and software that this process required. Our first job as a team was to plan for the tests. We had to come up with task objectives, which were designed to help us begin in the right direction by helping us see how we were going to evaluated the website in the future. We created a task objectives sheet that covered the material in the website we wanted to focus on during our tests. The first big job that we were apart of was the test plan. This plan was a work in progress for a while because it was such a huge job. Our team was responsible for creating the testing environment section, the users tasks, and the quantitative and qualitative data summary that would be used during the tests.
To learn more about our testing environment, we spent a day in the usability lag learning about the equipment and software. We made sure we were able to use the cameras and work all of the recording equipment. The quantitative and qualitative data we expected to be the actual observation of users interacting with the website and their responses about the website afterwards. The user tasks section was much harder. We had to use the user personas from the S&PM group to tailer a test for them that would evaluate the elements we wanted.
Then we created the documents that we would need for the tests, in the user tests. When testing began we used our knowledge that we had learned from class lectures and our text book to operate the testing as smoothly as possible. The planning really helped!
After the testing, the tedious process of editing the video clips began. We had to find and edit the clips we wanted to use for our presentation to our clients. Not only that, but we had to analyze our quantitative and qualitative data from the tests.
We gathered our entire data analysis and assembled it into the final report. We presented our final report and it was amazing!
I have never been involved in such a big project as this, especially not in a professional setting. This experience is a great introduction for the business world.
Filed under: Uncategorized
