Overview
For this assignment, you will be asked to answer a series of prompts that have been borrowed from usability.gov’s website page, “Planning a Usability Test. (https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/planning-usability-testing.html.)” The selected questions are meant to help you create a plan for your usability test. In order to answer some of the prompts below, you may need to make some decisions about your test and methods.
This assignment is meant to help you generate and articulate ideas for your usability test. You can think of this assignment as part of the “planning” you should do when you are asked to complete a significant project. Although you will be asked to answer the prompts below as comprehensively as possible, you may find that hands-on research can be unpredictable. You may change your mind about your research approaches as you read other students’ projects and as you refine your testing objective. I recommend doing this kind of planning, brainstorming, and thinking before you test participants. It is more difficult to be flexible about your methodology when you involve participants.
For this discussion assignment, please note that you will need to post your response first before you are able to see what others have posted.
Directions
Submit as a short, memo report, responses to the following prompts:
Scope: Indicate exactly what you are testing.
Purpose: What are the goals of the usability test?
Participants: Who is the target user for your instructions? How will you select participants for this usability test?
For this section, list questions you plan to ask your participants. Depending on your project and how you implement questions (during testing or in a post-test survey?), you should aim for around 5-8 questions for this assignment.
Equipment and Cautions: What equipment will you or the user need to complete your instructions? Is there any risk that a participant needs to understand before starting the test?
Metrics and Methods: What will you test? How will you test it?
Testing Sessions: How do you imagine your sessions will look like? Where? How long will it take? What will participants do?
Are you having trouble with where to start? This is a good opportunity to schedule an appointment to talk to your instructor and/or to reach out to your classmates.
If you are working in a group, only one member has to respond for this discussion. Make sure that the submission includes the names of all group members. However, all students will need to respond to the next “Learning from Classmates” discussion.
Requirements and Grading
This discussion is worth more than previous discussions. Your post should be around 500 words or longer in length and demonstrate the criteria provided by the accompanying rubric. You do not need to respond to peers for this Discussion. You will respond to peers in the next discussion.
