#170 Usability testing for fedora happiness packets
Closed: Complete 5 years ago Opened 5 years ago by algogator.


Hi @algogator, thanks for filing this.

Could you elaborate on what kind of usability testing you would like people to do and when you would like feedback by?

A former Outreachy intern for GNOME wrote a short blog post about types of usability testing. I would guess interviews and/or questionnaires would be helpful, but it is up to you to decide what kind of usability testing you want to conduct.

Once you decide on what kind of usability testing to do, let us know what steps to follow or how you would like us to participate (and what format to deliver feedback) by outlining the steps in this ticket. If you include a deadline, this helps us prioritize the need to deliver you feedback on the project.

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue assigned to algogator
- Issue marked as blocking: #110
- Issue priority set to: no deadline (was: awaiting triage)
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 29 (to Oct. 2018)
- Issue tagged with: needs info, team - commops, type - GSoC

5 years ago

Some other resources for usability testing:

Days 2 and 3 had a lot of design-focused activities, too. For example, on Wednesday afternoon I attended a talk about Micro Usability Testing by Jenn Kotler. She is an interaction designer, and often does usability testing in her daily work. Jenn talked about the importance of early user testing, using the example of an amusement park app. I was very interested to find out how a micro-test is different from regular usability test or hallway testing, for example. Turns out, usually it has fewer participants (5-10 people), looking for early problem identification. It really helps to test the product or feature early, since people would be more open to changes before they have put in a lot of effort. Then she told us how to choose people for testing. One should focus on targeted users; also Jenn shared a tip from personal experience, which is “techies make bad testers”. They tend to get caught up in technology and get sidetracked on implementation details.

Then we discussed interacting with testers during the test; the most difficult part is pretending not to be there. One should also be very mindful of language and body language, trying to stay as neutral as possible. That includes neutral wording of tasks, as the questions and tasks should not include neither positive nor negative language. You might have guessed that neutral is the core word here 🙂

After that Jenn talked for a bit about designing a user test. In that phase you have to be very specific and define what you are trying to learn, thus establishing a goal. Decide what the pivotal feature of the app is. Then you can break this bigger goal into objectives that are going to be the basis for you tasks. It’s usually a good idea to ask users to rate tasks difficulty on a 1-5 scale after performing each one, and also ask them to fill in a System Usability Scale or SUS questionnaire in the end.

@algogator @jflory7 please reach out if you need any help setting up the testing.

The first thing that comes to mind: you need to clearly define for yourself the critical tasks you want your users to perform, and check if they can do them easily or if they experience any problems. This can be done both remotely or in person. Flock, for example, can be a great place to conduct some hallway testing and get quick and easy results.

Or just ask people to perform specific tasks on their own time and report back to you. As always, some testing is better than no testing :)

Here's a great article on how to choose tasks https://www.nngroup.com/articles/better-usability-tasks/

Hope this helps :)

We were planning to do the usability testing at FLOCK. During the 4 days or maybe even at the end of the talk. A 1 on 1 interview or group review. What do you think?

Hey @algogator! I think it's great that you're going to do this! For Flock the best idea would probably be to go with hallway testing and set up somewhere with a lot of people coming by. You could do short test sessions, up to 15 minutes, in between talks, for example.
Here are some great tips on how to do that: https://digital.gov/2014/02/19/10-tips-for-better-hallway-usability-testing/

I'm generally not a fan of group testing, because that way you'll miss a lot of important feedback and individual actions, so better to do it 1x1.

Hi @algogator, since this was done at Flock as part of the CommOps workshop, I am going to close this ticket as complete. I hope the sessions were useful for you at Flock! :grinning:

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue untagged with: needs info
- Issue close_status updated to: Complete
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

5 years ago

Login to comment on this ticket.

Metadata