GR6-User Testing
Design:
Implementation:
Briefing
"You heard about a new website for managing bookmarks from your friends and you decide to check it out. You land on a page that you are seeing right now. We will give you a few tasks that aim to test this user interface. Please think aloud and feel free to explore the interface."
(We gave users only a short briefing in an attempt to test the visibility of our application. Because all 6 users were tech savvy, we did not have any problem with this. However, we will adjust this briefing in testing sessions with users who have not used bookmarks before. We will explain the purpose of traditional bookmarks and then general description of capabilities of our application.)
...
believe that our landing page does a very good job of explaining to the users what MyWeb is all about so we kept our briefing short and simple.)
Tasks
The tasks we gave to users were divided into three main categories as specified in our previous reports:
...
- Sign up for MyWeb
- Import bookmarks from Firefox
- Change password
- Import bookmarks additionally from Chrome (once user is already logged in)
...
- Tell us what you think you are seeing now (given immediately after sign up/log in)
- Create a new folder and name it “Classes”
- Add a bookmark for 6.813 stellar page to folder Classes.
- Create a new folder, name it “MIT” and move your bookmark for 6.813 from folder Classes to folder MIT.** Would you expect the bookmark to be present in both folders or only in MIT?
- Remove folder Classes
- Change the name of the 6.813 stellar page bookmark to “UI”
- Find all the bookmarks that contain word “stellar” in their name** What do you expect that search does?
- Where does it search?
- View all the bookmarks you have
- View all the bookmarks shared with you / what do you think that folder “Shared” contains?
...
- Share 6.813 stellar page bookmark with your friend Jovana.**
- What do you need to know for this task?
- How would you obtain it?
Observations: Before the Iteration
User | Creating and Managing an Account | Interacting with MyWeb | Sharing the Bookmarks |
|---|---|---|---|
User #1 |
|
|
|
User #2 |
|
|
|
User #3 |
|
|
|
...
Evaluation:
...
Comment: For our last user we took a different approach. We didn’t give user any tasks or instructions, we just told him what the website is about and we let him explore around while talking out loud about each of the buttons, components, etc.
User | Creating and Managing an Account | Interacting with MyWeb | Sharing the Bookmarks |
|---|---|---|---|
User #4 |
|
|
|
User #5 |
|
|
|
User #6 |
|
|
|
Prototype iteration
After testing our first iteration, we realized that majority of our problems came from not having an adequate error prevention. We classified our problems into categories.
Usability issues | User input | Prototype change | Photo |
|---|---|---|---|
Error |
|
| |
Visibility |
|
| |
Learnability |
|
| |
Future Iterations
Throughout this two days user testing, we tried to correct for errors in our design and improve learnability. However, we recognize the problem with efficiency and would like to implement the third iteration that would try to improve this aspect of usability. We identify two problems:
...
Problem
...
Possible solution
...
When a user wants to add a bookmark, if he doesn't know the URL by hearth (which is the most common case), he will have to open up a new tab in his browser, find that webpage, copy the URL and paste it into the proper field inside our application. Very tedious!
...
Our solution would be to have google search as a part of our application, on the page that opens up when the user clicks on Add bookmark. Then user can find the desired page, and simply click on it to bookmark it. Much more efficient + no need to leave our application.
...
Similar problem happens with friend's emails. User needs to remember the email, or copy paste it form somewhere else.
...
Two possible solutions:
- have application remember emails or even have possibility to import contacts the same way we imported bookmarks. That way, user can start typing, or have a drop list to choose from.
- The second possibility, that can be implemented in combination with the previous solution as well, is to have Friends field to the left of the screen, together with our Folder field. Friends field would contain all the friends, and user could simply share bookmarks by drag and dropping the bookmark onto one of his friends.
...
Users are not sure in which folder they are currently in when they are searching.
...
We could have a drop-down list titled IN next to the search box that shows which folder you are searching.
...
The only way to change the directory of the bookmark is drag and drop, which is not always visible.
...
Even though most of our users were able to figure this out, it might become a problem with non tech savvy users. We should test non-tech savvy users and possibly add an alternative way for moving the bookmarks between the folders.
...
Users try to click on the Step I, Step II and Step III on our introductory page.
...
Make Step I, Step II, Step III clickable, and with the click the video would show up, demonstrating particular Step directly on our application.
...
The "x" button on top of the bookmarks can be thought of as "close" instead of "delete".
...
Warning if the bookmark is being deleted. That would increase the learnability of this feature.
Reflection:
...
Even with the confirmation messages errors such us unintentionally deleting a folder/bookmark are possible.
...