Participating in a Usability Study!

This week I participated in a usability study for a local company in downtown Seattle. I’m not going to write the specifics of the company or of the product I tested because I’m not sure what the legal president is here, but I do want to write a little about my experience as a first time usability test subject in the real world.

I have participated in a usability study done by my peers, and ran my own study for the same class, but those experiences were all in the confines of the classroom. It was exciting and informative to be part of a usability test run by a company that is fine tuning their products. The people involved in the test were myself, the woman running the test, and a videographer who took care of the video and sound. We were all crammed into a very tiny cozy room with the woman and myself seated at a desk and the videographer off to the side so he could get a good shot of me using the computer and later the phone. I got to test the product on a desktop and an app version and I actually ended up liking the app version better which is kind of a surprise because I don’t really use apps all that much.

One thing that really stands out to me about usability testing is the delicate line the tester has to walk when interacting with the participant in order to gather data on a specific element. You don’t want to ask leading questions or give away the answers but at the same time you won’t be able to gather data if the participant is unable to find/do something that you are testing. There was one particular action in this test that I just couldn’t figure out how to do and the tester ended up having me try to accomplish the task by guiding me to several different starting points. In the end I never figured out how to accomplish the task and even though this is great feedback for the test I still felt a little dumb. But then again that is the whole point of usability testing; to see how your users are actually going to use, or fail to use, the product.

A nice part about actually sitting in a room with the person who is testing your product is getting to use the think aloud protocol. The think aloud protocol is pretty much what it sounds like, you have the participant explain their thought process and feelings out loud as they are attempting to complete tasks. This is especially helpful if the process is going to be videotaped, then both the participant and the tester can focus on the task at hand and not have to worry as much about remembering details for later.

I find that I often have helpful insights while in the moment, but when looking back on an experience later I will lose all but one or two. After the fact written feedback from me would not be as useful as just letting me ramble as I’m trying to accomplish a task. Very often I find that I have ideas that are completely unrelated to the subject at hand but that are ultimately useful when considering the product as a whole. In fact, I ended up giving more feedback about things that were not present in the app than the elements that were.

I quite enjoyed my first experience participating in a usability test and I am looking forward to being able to participate in more. Hopefully someday soon I’ll be able have a job running my own tests!