February 12th: Planning For Your User Documents

Announcements

• Happy Early Valentine's Day
• Folks, it's scientifically proven that it just gets worse...This is an excellent reading to share with your partner, spouse, significant other, etc.

Plan of Attack /
I'm being taken /
About to crack /
Defences breaking

Below is a list of what we'll attempt to get to today. I'll give you a preview now:

• User-Centered Technology Ch. 1, 2, 3, & 4 Highlights

• Interactive Design vs. Usability Testing

• User Test for User Doc #1

• IRA-Career Essays (turned back before you leave)

We want to have 30 minutes or so at the end of class to user test User Doc #1.

User-Centered Technology: Chapters 1, 2, 3, & 4

In order to keep things ordered better, I'm putting notes for Johnson's User-Centered Technology on a separate webpage. Let's head on over to there now.

Interactive Design vs. Usability Testing

There's an interesting assignment that comes from a previous textbook I used for this class on paper prototyping:

Exercise: Working in groups, create a "paper" prototype for an information kiosk to assist visitors to your campus or office building or to a shopping mall or museum. The kiosk will be located in the lobby or central location (you define where). Visitors unfamiliar with the services or locations of departments would consult this kiosk to get a sense of where to go and how to get there. Consider the types of visitors you need to help and the types of information they will want. Create a profile of your primary visitors and tasks. Then, create the "interface," beginning with the main screen, from which the user can select other screens for information. When the task is complete, a representative from another group will become the target user for you kiosk to test the usability of your prototype. (Exercise comes from Barnum, 2002, p. 137)**

Instead of using index cards or paper, use the Notepad and have separate text files (.txt) represent different cards--using word documents would be goofy, so use Notepad. This ought to have a rather interesting effect on the user. When you come to the part where you bring in another user, describe (meaning write this down on something) how the user adjusts the prototype (the "cards") you created. Make sure you ask the user to arrange the cards on the desktop as they would want them to appear on a kiosk interface--don't coach them. Therefore, you create the cards, but let the user arrange them.

One of you should host the final prototype on his/her webpage, but each member should have a link to the prototype. Make screen captures or an entire screen capture of the layout the group decides.

Those of you who are testing these designs, I want you to report back to class why you arranged the cards or adjusted the contents of the cards (adding or deleting) the way you did. In other words, what is your mental model of how that particular kiosk should be set up?

Time permitting, I want to play a little memory game based on the short- and long-term memory but, if we're short on time tonight, we'll skip it.

Class Group Work (time permitting)

I want you to turn to the person to your left and observe him or her doing the following:

• Find the web page for Vanderbilt University's nightly news footage repository.
• Type up a list of the news channels the repository holds.

Then, the person you observed should observe you do the following:

• Find out who won the Nobel prize in physics 104 years ago.
• Type up a list of the winners.

User Document #1

Assuming you're thinking about search engines, come up with a way to help a novice user "have fun with a purpose". You'll have a chance to test your classmates next class, so for the rest of class finish a rough draft for User Doc #1.

Your User Doc should include the following when you turn it in:

• The meta-analysis persona document:

  • A brief description of the instrument

  • Explanation of how the user will approach the set of instructions

  • Information on two personas
    
    
• The actual document--the steps on how to use the search engine

The meta-analysis persona document, which includes the three sub bullets, is one document. The last bulleted item is your actual steps or procedures for getting a user through the search engine query you're using. You could also include a description of the instrument with the actual instructions.

If you find that you're done after 3 steps, consider describing the features of the search engine's results. As I said before, 10 steps is a bit much, but you can describe the results if you seem to be finished after a few steps.

These word-processed planning documents are part of your User Doc grade, so make sure you do them.

USER TEST #1

Today you'll have a chance to do some usability testing on your wonderful classmates. I want half of you to be the users for the other half of class, and then we'll switch sides. However, I want to avoid having users and testers be the testers and users for each other; therefore, test/be the user for another person. Then you may get a new person to test your user doc.

Think of this as a practice user test. Pull out a sheet of paper, or type this up. I want you to do a pre-test interview that asks the following of your user (yes, you posted something similar last week on Moodle...this is different...later this semester you'll have to do more involved user testing, so consider this practice). You aren't turning this in, but it could be a discussion point in the future:

• On a scale of 1-5 (1 being least, 5 being greatest), rate your computer literacy.
• Why do you believe you are or are not "computer literate"? In other words, what skills or knowledge do you have or don't have that makes you claim you're computer literate or not.
• What is the user's major/background?

After the pre-test interview, let the user get to it and note how the users interact with your document. TRY YOUR BEST NOT TO INFLUENCE him or her. Don't lead them to a specific task or component; observe what happens. Observe what the user does and whether or not they use your document.

After the user does his or her thing, then interview and ask what you can do to improve the instructions. Record this somewhere.

One more time: Your User Doc should include the following when you turn it in:

• The meta-analysis persona document:

  • A brief description of the instrument

  • Explanation of how the user will approach the set of instructions

  • Information on two personas
    
    
• The actual document--the steps on how to use the search engine

The meta-analysis persona document, is a separate document. Please refer to Cooper pp. 135-147 (among other places) for information on how to create personas. Your User Doc personas should be in paragraph form (Cooper, p. 142), but your Persona Research will be much, much more in depth, but that's a future concern.

User Doc for Uploading Webpages

When you were reading Cooper's book, did you think about the frustrations you had with not only uploading a webpage but documenting that process? What parallels did you find? If you have some more time, let's try to perfect those user docs from a couple weeks ago.

Future Testing

Later on in the semester, I'll ask for more detailed descriptions and usability testing procedures (i.e., questions, settings, specific goals). Consider the test you did today a starting point from where we'll build toward a larger planning stage.

IRA-Career Essays

I made a page about general feedback on your IRA-Career Essays, check it out...and, I guess, enjoy!

Before We Go...

Make sure you have a printed-out copy of your User Doc #1 next class (2/19--your Valentine's Day gift to me). Keep up with the reading--Johnson, Ch. 6. We'll plan for User Doc #2 next week.