How I Was Studying 3 Buttons for 20 Hours - dejesustheral83

Let Maine typeset the scene. It was during our weekly meeting:

— Andrew, we've successful a new awesome feature, you should mental testing it
— Yeah, trusty
— Hey, maybe you'll even write an article just about it!
— Uh-uh…

There was just one problem…

When I'm asked to test a boast, it usually means conducting a usability resume, which involves finding participants, preparing a set of tasks and questions, and then executing them (the questions, not the participants) in a Skype audience.

So I went to our website to play with the feature myself, imagining different tasks related to with it. IT took me 11 seconds to try everything possible. I symmetrical tried to do it regressive and pretended I was having a conversation with my sire happening the telephone set. 30 seconds. Then my mother actually called me, so I tried it again. 20 seconds.

The feature I'm talking about is these three buttons in the upper right corner. They switch between three view modes.

Three buttons switch between iii consider modes: ICONS Lonesome, ICONS with LABELS and a TABLE view.

My usual Skype interview lasts 30-minutes: 80% of it is tasks and 20% is usually gab and my fair jokes. With 30 seconds for tasks, I had to encompass the other 29 minutes with my jokes. I wouldn't set that for 2 reasons:

• No living soul deserves that
• If I could do that, I would be a stand-up comedian

So, all I had for the here and now were trey buttons that I could test with one call into question.

My notes at this point looked like:

1. Some undertaking that checks if people get a line these 3 buttons
2. "Of these 3 view modes, which one and only act up you prefer?"

Looking for More Stuff

I needed something more. So I dug deeper. In one of the modes, I found the 4th button.

1. A task that checks if people see these 3 buttons
2. "Can you order me what this 'plus' button does?"
3. "Of these 3 view modes, which one do you choose?"

Yet at this point the interview was still rattling short and I ran come out of buttons. I was just nonmoving and bluntly clicking between all of the trey modes, thinking about life, existence, and a nervous breakdown. Then it smash me.

In the lead until this moment I was rational about UI, that is an interface. Specifically, a set of buttons and what these buttons were doing automatically – switching between 3 modes of viewing icons.

Now I was reasoning about Uxor, Oregon experience. A large number of questions rush through my head. Do text labels affect masses in some way? Does it affect how people search icons? Does it affect their overall have? What's for dinner?

All these abstract questions are great, but I cannot just ask participants "hey, do you find oneself text edition labels useful?" because there is a big difference between how people serve questions and how they in truth do things. I was faced with determination objective tasks to see how people really do.

How? I equitable got into their skin and start searching different icons. I was searching for car icons, cat and dog icons, touristed icons, and exceptional icons. I switched betwixt the modes and searched again and again.

Of course, if you hunting for different things you perplex variant results. But the real difference was my focus. If I was looking a cat, I had clear expectations. However, if I looked for "news" or "music," my search expectations were much more vague.

Even if different lookup expectations subject, what nearly different view modes?

This one simple question filled my 30-minute quota.

Conscientious: always comprehend deeper

Final Script Rough drawing

1. A task that checks if people experience these 3 buttons
2. • SEARCH in [just icons] mode: guy, phone, arrow, news, start, music
   • SEARCH in [icons with label] mode: dog, blood line, boxful, idea, stop, crop

   Remonstrate irrelevant search results

3. "Can you tell me what the "plus" button does?"
4. "Of these 3 view modes, which one do you prefer?"

I wanted participants to search for a "cat" picture in icons only when mode and then orient out any irrelevant search results.

And then I would ask another player to search for the Saami "cat" icon, but in icons + label text mode, and point out irrelevant search results.

Buckeye State calculate, that's Gabriel Aul. That explains everything! Or non… Sometimes our look surprises even us.

OK, rent's take a better example. Suppose, you explore for a lineage icon:

With text labels participants would no longer receive "command line" icon irrelevant. Just that's just one of many personal effects.

My goal was to prove that different people consider some results more relevant than others, sol I'd see the difference in their perception. I would also see if labels affect perception in any way.

Moral: struggle to find ways to measure the experience of your users.

Testing My Test

At this point my script was robust, but I was incertain about it and asked my colleague to act a participant, Eastern Samoa if it was a real interview.
Turns knocked out it was not that racy the least bit. I had to make some changes.

1. "Nates you change the way icons search results are diagrammatic?"
2. • SEARCH in [just icons] mode: honk, telephone set, arrow, news, start, music
   • SEARCH in [icons with text label] mood: dog, cable, package, idea, stop, work

   Point out impertinent search results

3. "Can you tell me, without pressing IT, what the 'plus' clit does?"
4. "Of all the three modes, which one do you prefer?"

Changes:

• The maiden question led to ambiguity
• With 10 different searches, the whole interview took 60 minutes. I was aiming for 15-30 minutes, so I had to reduce the number to 6
• In the third motion, I had to expressly ask the participant not to touch the button – too much enticement otherwise

Moralistic: it's good to do some kind of reconnaissance mission before you start conducting real interviews

What's next?

Victory loves preparation. Now I had my book and was ready to test it with real people, so I did just that. 7 participants, 15+ pages of notes and 3 hours of video recording material that I want to social system somehow. And I'm writing an article nigh that right today. Next article will be about results, insights and uneasy silences. If you are reading this and don't see a linkup to the second base article, thither are two things possible:

1. Current clause was released of late
2. I went mad and I'm writing conclusions on my window

I post updates happening my twitter.

Tune in!

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Approximately the author:
Andrew started at Icons8 as a usability specialist, conducting interviews and usableness surveys. He desperately wanted to portion his findings with our business community and started writing insightful and funny (sometimes both) stories for our blog.

Source: https://blog.icons8.com/articles/how-i-was-testing-3-buttons-for-20-hours/

Posted by: dejesustheral83.blogspot.com

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