Usability II Week 7

Today marks the completion of my second semester in my masters program. This semester I was able to learn a lot about usability and conducting research. In my job I had the opportunity to do some user research, but I am glad with these classes we had the opportunity to use some different resources to conduct our own little studies. I learned much more about how to set up and conduct a study as well as look and report data. I like the set up of the classes being more project based than lecture based. I feel that I have had the opportunity to learn a lot more because of this setup.

This week in particular I liked learning about gathering data from eye tracking devices. I have had chances read about eye tracking but having the opportunity to parse out eye tracking data was fun. I am excited for my next semester and to see what new opportunities this program will bring.

Usability II Week 6

This week we learned about eye tracking and how it can be used in usability studies. I find eye tracking to be an interesting asset when testing usability. I like how it allows for the researchers to "see" what the user was looking at when they were performing the task.
While eye tracking can be helpful, the readings this week brought up an interesting problem they called the Ketchup Bottle problem. The problem states that when opening the fridge and looking for the bottle of ketchup they may be looking right at the bottle they don't actually see the bottle.
In my work I have researched many different types of eye tracking devices, but have not had the opportunity to use one in my research. However, some of my coworkers have had the opportunity to use eye trackers and have had mixed reviews. Some find the information very helpful in their research while others find that the setup and care of the eye tracker is too much of a hassle and not worth the data it collects.

This week we learned more about conducting usability studies on mobile devices. The main assignment for this week and last week was to write up a proposal on conducting a usability study on mobile devices. I thought that it was really cool learning about some of the technology that could be used for testing. Eye tracking is such a great tool.

On the other hand I was kind of surprised how little there was in technologies to conduct usability tests on mobile devices. With such devices playing a vital role in how we interact with technology I at least thought there would be more sophisticated equipment involved. It was funny to me that some of the best techniques involved basically strapping a camera to it.

I think in the future we may see more gadgets become available for mobile testing since mobile devices are only expected to grow to be more and more pomenent.

Usability II Week 4

This week in class we started learning about useability of mobile devices. With so many people interacting with mobile devices its becoming more and more important to have websites and applications be adaptable to multiple size screens and inputs.
It was interesting to learn about what all there is to consider when designing for mobile devices. Since mobile devices can't use a mouse and keyboard it is important to create usable inputs for the device. I thought it was interesting to read about the 10mm principle where buttons have to be at least that size for mobile interaction.
Working to create a usability study has another set of issues involved. Since there are no set sizes for mobile devices, any design has to be compatible to any sized screen and any type of processing system. A design has to be complete enough to be a comprehensive test, but short enough to be efficient. Next week we will learn more about that.

Usability II week 3

In week three we finally were able to complete and report on our usability studies that were conducted with Loop 11. I ended up conducting the usability study on Hotwire.com. Despite some of the issues from loop 11 I was able to successfully find participants and conduct the study on hotwire.com.

Overall I found that participants were successfully able to compete all tasks on hotwire.com. There were some issues that happened with both the hotwire site and the loop 11 site, but that is expected with any type of website. Besides that is why usability studies are done.

In the end the project these three weeks was not as bad as I was expecting. Despite all the issues found with loop 11 I feel confident with the results I found in my usability study.

Usability II week 2

This week we had to set up a usability study with the help of a site called Loop 11. This was my first time using Loop and I found some things very frustrating about the program. Other than the obvious issues that occurred, some other things that really frustrated me about the program. First of all there was absolutely no ability to edit the study once published. I feel like this is a huge over-site especially for first time users. It would be nice to have the opportunity to change questions or orders of sets after publication. It would also be nice to have a better format for demographic questions, and post test questions instead of clumping everything together. I was also thinking it would be nice to have some pre-made demographic questionnaires such as gender or age that can be easily popped into any experiment. These questions are used a lot and so it would be nice to not have everyone spend the time creating them.

In the end my experiment that I created is not working 100% and it is very frustrating for me to experience this after spending a lot of time trying to figure out the system in the first place. While Loop 11 is a great idea, I think they need a lot more functionality work done before I feel that they can be reliable. I will probably have to redo my assignment, which makes this whole experience that much more annoying. :-/

Usability II Week 1

This week I was able to get an introduction into my second class for the semester, Usability II. It looks like this class will take a little bit different approach from my class earlier this semester. We are getting more into the actual tools that we can use to run a usability study. This week we looked a two different types of recruitment websites that can be used to recruit participants for usability studies. One the them was a site called Ethnio. I found some of the stuff it could do would be very helpful to recruit participants, especially for studies conducted online.

Another site we started to use but haven't gotten too far into yet is Loop 11. I am really excited to have the opportunity to work with this website. I have not done any user testing online so using this site will be a new experience. We will have to see where the rest of the class goes.

Usability Week 6 and 7

In the last 2 weeks we were tasked to analyze the data from the usability study and create a final report. Pretty much we had to wrap up everything we did for this class in a nice paper.

Overall I enjoyed this class. I conduct a lot of usability studies through my work so most of the stuff that we talked about in this class was not new to me but it was nice to see it applied differently than what I work with every day. Also I don't write up actually business reports often, instead I do presentations of results. Writing reports for this class was helpful just to get a different aspect of presenting data to he client. Overall the class was a good experience and I enjoyed it.

Usability Week 5

This week was interesting in my usability class. I had to conduct a usability study on the Papa John's ordering website. It was interesting but I have had a number of challenges that I am still having issues with. First off it was difficult to get someone to sit down and take time to run the study for me. Finally I was able to get one of my friends to assist me. The first attempt I did went off very well and I was able to complete the session smoothly and get my data. Then I realized after I completed it that I didn't do a screen capture of the session.

Upon trying to do a second session with screen capture we found the site down for maintenance and upon checking on it every half hour, I have found the site still not working properly. I am still waiting to get it to work properly. I unfortunately don't have time anymore to run another session with my participant so my plan is to use to audio recording I have of the complete session to guide a screenshot capture. Basically create a visual for the audio I have. Luckily my participant did very well at describing his methods that I can do this. In a real life scenario I would just use the data that was available to me and not try to recreate a visual file, but due to the fact these visual files are needed for next week I will make sure there is a file to work off of. This task has been a lot more frustrating than I was expecting.

Usability Week 4

Week 4 of our class focused on qualitative and quantitative measures. In my experience with research I have done both qualitative and quantitative measures. I personally like quantitative measures over qualitative since having data in numbers is more efficient to crunch numbers. Although, in my experience qualitative measures are helpful in supporting what the quantitative data finds.

This week I also did some research on facial expressions and found a really cool software made by Noldus. It uses a camera to view a person's face and automatically analyzes the facial expressions. The software looks like it would be fun to use and be very beneficial to any study that is trying to use facial recognition as a measure.

Usability Week 3

This week in our usability class we worked on screening questions and task lists. Both are quite important when it comes to doing a usability test. Screening questions to make sure your participants are representing the right demographic, and task lists are created to make sure you are having your participants testing the usability of your program as efficiently as possible.

This week our task was to work in groups to complete question development for screening questions and task lists. Honestly I found the group work a little confusing. Other than sharing possible questions for each person's final list, there wasn't really much discussion. Given there was not much time for discussion either. I find it a little difficult for group work on an online course. If group work is not specified its hard to get all participants involved equally.  Luckily I was able to use the initial input of my group members to create my final lists.

Usability Week 2

This week in our usability class we learned about usability studies in product development. We mainly focused on the two main types of usability studies, summitive and formative. Each type of study has pros and cons depending on what type of time, budget, and type of project is being conducted.

I have done multiple user studies at work, and all of them have been summative studies so far. We develop an interface then test using a set of predefined requirements. I am currently running a summative study on an interface looking at task completion time and error rates. Hopefully sometime soon I will have the opportunity to do a formative study, I think formative studies would help with our interface designs while in development.

Usability Week 1

This week I started my second semester in Kent State's user experience design course. Its weird getting back into the swing of things after being off for five weeks, but I'm finding my stride. The course I am currently taking is Usability 1, which should be fun since I am working on a usability project at work right now.

The lessons this week were about how many participants to use in a usability study and why academic studies require so many more participants. I found the assignments informative but I had so much trouble just getting into the two page paper. Its not that it was difficult or anything, but I was really having writers block when it came to just putting the first sentence down. I'm sure its just because I am trying to get back into class mode.

Well some much for this week, we'll see what happens next week.