Usability testing

Introduction

Thanks for helping us test some features of our new e-books. Your assistance will be really helpful to us. I'm , and this is , who will be taking some notes as we work.

We're going to give you a short task to do using one of our e-books. As you do the task, we would like you to speak your thoughts aloud so that we can hear what you're looking for on the screen, why you select the menu items or links you select, and so on. Knowing what you're thinking helps us understand how users need this software to work.

Because we want to learn how well this software will work when a user has to figure it out on his or her own, we'll refrain from answering questions while you do the task. Please simply do the best you can--any problems you have will show us where the software needs to be improved! But we'll be happy to answer questions at the end, and to hear any additional feed back that you have.

Sample task

e-Book Task 3 (uses Markel)

Check here each time you use this task set ________________

Purpose

This task will tell us whether and how users figure out how to add and delete notes in an e-book.

Preparation

Log into Tech Comm e-Book as instructor@school.edu/demo and go to any internal page that doesn't have notes at the top.

e-Book Task 3

1. Add an annotation on this page that says: "This is a note about this text". Make your annotation available to other users.
2. Now delete the note you just added.

Observer notes for e-Book Task 3

The tester's task is to add and then delete a note. Please note what correct and incorrect paths they follow; whether/how/how long/how successfully they use the help menu; what they say about what they're looking for, and why they're clicking on what they're clicking.