On user test day, I’ll order in some sort of food/snacks (I’m thinking pizza) and we’ll have a variety of drinks for our users (and for us for when we finish this big task!)

Users will need to commit to an hour during our class block or starting as early as 4:00.

For the STI/STD:  we need six students. It would be good to have a diversity of age (within the demographic range), gender, race, and sexual orientation. Between us (well, this part of the us doesn’t include me), we need to find these users to come our class on 4-4.

For the HBP: I am working with a group on campus to see if we can’t recruit some 50+ folks from a specific organization that has often helped classes and researchers in the past. I’ll know more about this by the middle of the week of 3-27. (The contact was leaving for vacation the day I emailed.) However, we also need to tap our own networks to see if we can find some folks to user test. In this, diversity is again good, but I imagine it may be a bit harder. We also need 6 participants for this, as well.

Your task is to work on recruitment. It does not work out evenly for every group to try and recruit one person so as we have done all term, we need to work more collaboratively to get our participants.

To work on recruitment, you need to respond (reply all) to the email I sent to let us know who you may have access to for recruitment purposes. So for example, I may email everyone and say: I believe I can get a 60 yo, female for the HBP testing. This way we can keep track of who we are recruiting. it’s ok if we have some overlap in participant demographics. We just need to do the best we can.

So this week (3-21), we did some user tests on a somewhat related (content wise) infographic to test our testing protocol and give you the chance to see what it was like to sort of perform a user test. (Because nothing can actually compare to doing a test in real life.)

There was lots that was really good about your draft protocols and how the tests actually went. So for example, you did gain the experience that you need to tell the user everything they need to do (for the most part), and you got to experience those moments of awkward silence as the tester was reading the material. You also did a good job of conceptualizing with the test is supposed to do, which is a big step. I really liked the way you all broke up the tasks and worked at getting specific notes for the tasks.

However, it didn’t seem in the protocols and in the practice user test that you took seriously the precision that is necessary in conducting a user test. By that I mean, it seemed to go a little too quickly and easily. Now, on one hand, that can be great in because you did understand the concept and you did successfully administer a test. On the other hand, however, it could mean that there was a lack of attention to detail and just trying to get things done. My hope is that when we do another run through next week we can a better sense of what to expect.

I also cannot stress enough that usability testing protocols (the testing part) or a test plan have to be created meticulously so that the data you gather is actually useful data for the question(s) being asked. One of the things we will do in class on 3-28 is to compare your draft test plans with the test plan that was compiled from all of your drafts. There are noticeable differences between them.

I know that this is a super hard project because there are lots of moving parts. And I also get that y’all are worried about not doing something right. Let me try and reassure you that I have a strong belief in you and fully believe you’re going to do great. You’ve done some really good work up to this point. I encourage you to believe in yourselves and all the knowledge that you’ve learned. You know stuff. The usability test will be putting that stuff into practice!

The schedule has been updated to reflect how the logistics of the tests will go.

Save

There is much, much to like about your drafts for the A-C Gap Part 1.

Some of the high points include

• solid grasp of the purpose (though some did this better than others)
• pretty solid grasp of audience
• solid, solid grasp of the material and data
• good understanding of basic design (including color, fonts, white space, headings, etc.)
• nice creativity in approaching a design narrative and integrating visual aspects into the documents

That’s a lot of good stuff to build on because, as we said from the beginning, these are to be considered first drafts. Here’s some things to consider when you’re moving onto the next stage of the projects (these are some of the big questions I would ask you and they are not all encompassing.):

• can you in one sentence define the data narrative?
• did you fully follow instructions on the inclusion of required data visualizations?
• why is there no substantial difference between your visually enhanced report and your infographic?
• do you feel your use of words enhanced the projects? (in other words, are your words any good?)
• did you answer the primary concerns of your personas with your two products?

Many of the critique comments on the infographics are spot on so I would definitely take the time to process those in conjunction with the other materials as you move forward to make the next draft iteration that we will be testing with real people.

Another great exercise (and one we will probably do in class after spring break) is to take a few moments to determine what you may change about the two products now that you have had some distance from them.