Re: [Usability] how to make usability test?

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 20:03 -0400, Jason Hoover wrote:

> Of course, this is a horrible outline, but such a document would be very
> useful. Sorry if I misunderstood you earlier.

We could probably update Chapter 12 in the HIG (currently a pretty
crappy 'usability checklist' sort of thing)... it's not very useful as
it is now.

> > Something like (some bits of) uzilla might be kind of interesting to
> > experiment with, too:
> > 
> > http://uzilla.net/uzilla/info/using_uzilla/test.cfm 
> 
> Hmm, not sure I understand what you mean, like giving a certain group of
> users a set of tasks and asking them to rate their difficulty?

More or less... or more generally, a standard way of distributing simple
usability tests (probably in the form of typical tasks for the user to
perform) with development versions of applications, where the users can
submit the results at the click of a button.  

Might not even need anything to be distributed with the app at all,  in
fact... could just be a website to which developers (with input from
usability folks) can submit tasks they'd like the user to try out, that
a pop-up or something encourages the user to visit the first time they
run a new version of the application.  Or a standard menu item
(Help->Usability Feedback?) that the user could select to run any
available tests whenever they wanted.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems