GR6 - User Testing
Design
Implementation
Evaluation
Briefing: "This is EventHub. It's a website for finding, scheduling, and posting events in the near future in your vicinity. So for example, if you have a couple hours to kill after class, you can come here and find something cool to do; or, if you want to organize a dinner with friends, instead of emailing everyone and juggling replies, you can organize it here. You're entering this situation in the middle of a user 'state': you already have friends, events in your calendar, all that. We're going to give you some tasks a normal user would do, and it would be extremely helpful if you would think aloud while performing these tasks. If you become confused or frustrated, please let us know because that means that we did something wrong, and need to fix it. You are free to leave the user test at any time for any reason. Any questions before we start? <wait for response> On that note, thank you for helping us improve EventHub!" (This is unchanged from the paper prototyping briefing)
Task 1: Log in!
Task 2: RSVP for the event “Awesome Event” taking place on 5/12/11
Task 3: Uh oh, you’re going to be late for “Awesome Event”. Leave a comment letting people know.
Task 4: You want to play chess this afternoon. Create a chess game event for 4:00pm today.
Task 5: Log out.
User 1: MIT senior, fits target audience as a college student in the Cambridge area. Has no user interface experience. User was briefed as described above and given the tasks above one at a time. The test went smoothly: the user completed all tasks without problem; the only intervention required was to explain how things should work if they had been fully implemented (in this case, the RSVP button on the "Awesome Event" page didn't visually toggle like it was supposed to). User was unsure about the difference between the Calendar and Browse Events tab; perhaps we should change the title of the Calendar tab to "My Events" or something more descriptive.