Smashing UX Design: Foundations for Designing Online User Experiences by Jesmond Allen & James Chudley

Author:Jesmond Allen & James Chudley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 13-2: Usability testing in action

In this example, I would give users the simple task of researching and attempting to purchase a new camera online having deliberately recruited people who were currently in the process of doing exactly that.

You should ensure that your test plan is broad enough to capture user needs and behavior across the entire spectrum of the task, from the very earliest tentative searches for recommendations to the actual point of purchase. Don’t stress if you can’t get everyone through the process, as you will construct the experience map from indicative behavior you see across all of your recruits.

Remember the objective of the exercise. You are trying to uncover people’s expectations and experiences of researching and buying a new camera. In this example I would write my test plan to ensure I got some great insights into the following questions I wanted to get answers to such as:

Where do people start? Where do they go? What do they search for? What are they worried about? What features are important to them? What causes them problems? What helps them with their tasks? How do they make decisions? What influences their choice? At which point do they fail or give up? How did they get to their final choice? Which patterns do you spot in user behavior?

It is likely that your client will also have a set of specific questions that they also want insights into. By planning the questions you want answers to, you can ensure that you ask the most useful questions that will contribute the most valuable insights to your map.

Step 2: Analyze your results and build the user layer

The easiest way to analyze the results of the tests is to pull out specific observations, behaviors, quotes, and issues and write each of them onto individual sticky notes. In this example, the logical way of ordering these is to map them to sequence of events that users followed during the testing.

Before you start make sure you have at least 4 or 5 meters (12 to 15 feet) of free wall space; this will give you enough space to get all of your sticky notes on the wall and also enough space to move them around. It is also advisable to stick some huge bits of paper to the wall first so you can roll up the whole finished map and transport it to clients.

The contents of the sticky notes can either be user questions or quotes that convey what users were trying to do at that particular time (see Figure 13-3). You may have groups of similar sticky notes that make different observations about the same thing; just pull these together and label them with a useful title such as “Researching Purchase” or “Choosing Between Options.” Rationalize the sticky notes as you go, removing any duplicates or anything you feel is not representative of your findings.

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