Article
Professional Website Usability
Briefing Participants
When the session is ready to begin, the facilitator should step to the front of the room and give a welcoming message and communicate ground rules. Below are the types of ground rules that the facilitator should describe during the opening of the session. These break the ice and give participants the "permission" they need to provide open and honest feedback and enjoy the session. The facilitator would say:
- There are no wrong answers; the purpose of the study is to validate the assumptions made by the web designers; this is not a test of you.
- You will not hurt anyone's feelings with your input; we want to create a website that will work for our users, and the best way to achieve this is to put the site in front of you in this type of study.
- Perform the activities as you would back at your desk or in your work environment.
- Give the same amount of time to each activity as you normally would; let the observer know when you would give up.
- Speak out loud as you move through activities so the observer can track where you go, when you get lost, why you chose one direction over another, what you expected to find versus what you really found.
- Don't ask your observer to provide direction or hints; they've been asked to prompt you to think through the solution, but not give you clues or answers.
- When the break will be.
- Relax, and have fun.
With this, the facilitator should look at the clock, note the time and begin the session. There will be a few minutes of chatter as observers and their participants get acquainted, then it will quiet down as they begin to move through the exercises. If the facilitator remains in the facilitator role, he/she may begin to move around the room listening and observing. This make the facilitator available to an observer or participant who may have a question.
There are questions that come up during a session. Often, they are from a participant who can't seem to work themselves out of an issue and they want further hints. The facilitator or observer should respond as follows:
If the question is:
"I've looked all over for this and can't find it. Would you start here and move to here?"
The answer could be:
"Go ahead and give it a try and we'll note where it took you. Of course, the observer would make notations about the path."
If the question is:
"I'm stuck at the home page and don't have a clue where to go. How should I approach this task?"
The answer might be:
"Are there any logical options you see? Which one is the most logical that you think might move you in the right direction? Which way do you think you should go? Go ahead and try it."
Answer the question with a question and prompt the participant to choose the most logical path or the path they would most likely take. Giving hints or answers can invalidate the scoring and quality of the responses, so don't let yourself get trapped.
Because participants will finish at different times, I recommend going ahead and letting them go as they finish. Thank them individually, hand them their incentive or token of appreciation and let them go. There's no need holding up the quicker finishers from the slower ones.
When everyone has completed their work, the facilitator can step to the front of the room and thank everyone again for their participation and their time. Let them know how the results will be used and if there any other next steps you had planned for in your implementation.
Sometimes, a participant will ask to review changes and be kept in the loop. These participants feel a real commitment to improving the product beyond just giving feedback, so if you're able, go ahead and include them.
Voila!
That's how you perform the actual study and script the session. It's not hard, just details and some protocol to learn.
You're well on your way to performing your own Website Usability study, and I hope Part 4 has given you some tips and tricks.
Part 5 is the last article in this series and it will focus on using the raw data and scoring results and to create a meaningful report.