I recently participated in user testing for one of the
departments on campus revamping its heavily-used website. I won’t identify the department to protect its
study and work, but I will say that the site is an important resource and
instructional tool on campus. I’m a
frequent user of the site, and as someone involved in the next usability study
for the Purdue OWL, I wanted to provide what I hoped would be helpful feedback
and learn about the usability work happening elsewhere on campus.
I like participating as a user and giving feedback. My first introduction to usability was as an
early adopter and usability participant for the TOPIC project at Texas Tech
University. Since then, I’ve become an
advocate, a learner who knows a few things though not an expert. I’m generally the type who will respond to
improvement and marketing surveys or provide user reviews, but usability is
something else and something more. When
I have a chance to do more than respond to a site’s color scheme or some
low-level feature, I will take the opportunity because it’s a learning
experience for me.
So I agreed to give an hour of my time to meet with the
researcher and provide information about the department’s existing site and
upcoming changes. I was given a short
demographic survey and then asked to perform a series of tasks on the site,
mostly related to locating specific pieces of information or resources on the
site. I relied heavily on the search
tool (which makes sense given this particular site), and I was introduced to features
I didn’t know about. The researcher made
an audio recording of my responses and also recorded my movements on the
screen. The tasks were most interesting,
and it became clear to me that the study was aimed at the site’s search
functionality and menu structure.
I tried to be as clear and detailed as possible in my
responses because I know how difficult and yet valuable it is to know what
users find helpful or not, what features they want and need, and what parts of
the site have simply been overlooked.
It’s a vulnerable moment for site administrators, webmasters, designers
and other staff when presented with users’ feedback. Data can offer surprising results, including
the fact that a feature lovingly created and nurtured by a designer is not helpful
to—or worse, vehemently hated by—users.
Feedback can result in the need for significant revisions. These are some reasons why usability research
is given just a passing, suspicious glance by designers.
Yet usability is extremely important, and because I valued
the campus website I was asked to test, I wanted my feedback to lead to
beneficial changes. Nevertheless, I was
very much aware that I had two purposes for participating in this study: as a legitimate user and as someone doing
reconnaissance for her own usability project.
One of the most important things I learned from this
experience is that test subjects can find usability studies as difficult as
researchers do. It’s not always possible
to articulate a reason for a preference or a process, so researchers need to be
clear and offer alternative explanations without leading the research subject
toward a certain (preferred) response. Also, recording subjects’ responses can
be helpful, since researchers cannot take detailed notes while paying close
attention to what users are doing and saying, what their eyes focus on, or what
the mouse clicks. And tracking users’
clicks and mouse movements with with software can reveal information that may
not be easily detectable by researchers.
And finally, usability is time-consuming work, even with
technologies that can make tracking, recording, card sorting, and other
activities easier. The researcher spent
nearly an hour with me just administering the tests. He and his co-researchers will then have to
compile data gathered from me and other participants. They will have to wade through all that
information to see what it yields about site users’ and their preferences and
needs. They will have to give that
information to site designers and programmers.
Someone, somewhere will have to decide what revisions should be made to
the site. And then someone else has to
make those changes.
The amount of work, time, and resources involved is not
surprising, especially after the previous OWL usability study. Like the campus website I tested, the OWL is
a heavily trafficked and complicated resource with many different stakeholders
to consider. I know from experience that
we’re in for several semesters’ worth of work, and with that in mind, I eagerly
but patiently await any changes to the site I tested, knowing that results can
take time. And I look forward to
figuring out what this next OWL usability project will be like.
