Usability Triathlon
January 24, 2003 | 
2 Comments
Last night we conducted a “usability triathlon”, as Brian, our Web Producer, likes to call it, with some of one of the biggest audiences we have for the hospital’s external site — the parents of our patients.
It was great. We got some really good information, some confirmation that we are on the right track to making a Web site that will really suit their needs and we had a fun time to boot. There were no huge surprises, only a few minor things with text size and the layout of the navigation, but the main thing we were testing, the structure and findability of the site, seemed to be very solid.
So let me tell you a bit about what we did. We decided to run these folks through three different exercises based on what we wanted to test and what kind of information we felt would be valuable to us from parents. Keep in mind, this is just one of three or four major audiences we have for this site.
The first was an emotional response test to get an idea of what kinds of sites they liked, what they didn’t like and where our site fit. We also asked them to put in their mind a perfect site for the hospital and give us information about that.
The second was a short findability test in which we walked them through a prototype of our site and had them tell us where they would look for information, what they expected to find in different sections and things of that nature.
The third was a questionnaire of sorts. We asked them about themselves, how they used the Web, what they liked or disliked about sites, their relationship to the hospital and what they expected from us in a Web site.
It was the first time we’d done an exercise of this depth, and I think it went really well. It’s so very interesting to interact with people that use your site, you really can learn allot. These people see things is such a different light, and sometimes the things we as developers and designers take for granted can be very, very (in our case almost life or death - no joke) important to our users.
Filed under: IA and Usability
Comments
1. Denis Boudreau said:
Great job with these usbility tests! That’s an awesome way to work! I wish you would make this questionnaire available so we could maybe use it as well - I am trying to come up with an efficient way to conduct usability tests myself.
Posted on January 25, 2003 07:00 PM | #
2. Keith said:
Well, maybe I’ll make some form of it available at some point. A template if you will. The one we used was very specific to our users - You’re welcome to see that if you wish, just shoot me an email and I’ll send you a copy.
It’s pretty straight forward and simple, and was very useful - as simple things usually are.
Posted on January 28, 2003 05:20 PM | #
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