The long-awaited conclusion…
Part 3: Post-Test
Our usability testing regarding recording seemed inconclusive. Both the old way of recording and the new way were intuitive enough for our testers to breeze right by them. In the end, we ended up with a kind of hybrid approach that seemed to please both the developers and the testers. It turned out something like this:
This organization and wording of the menu items spell out the actions they cause as clearly as possible to (hopefully) avoid any confusion.
As for the grid view, we made what changes we could before release to address some of the more troubling issues our test users had with it. Even more changes are in store for the next one and we plan to look at some even larger-scale changes for future releases. Many of the changes would not have been as high a priority or looked at as closely without actually seeing a user struggle with them. It’s difficult to ascertain usability from a list of defects marked “UI”.
A summary of post-test lessons learned:
- Sometimes testing won’t reveal what you want it to. Either perform a varied test, or go with what data you did get.
- Reviewing the video can reveal even more than your initial notes. Be sure to check it.
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