March 2008

Chapter Business

Chris Hass opened with announcments. If you're not registered please register for mini-UPA. We have over 30 speakers for the event. You don't need to pre-register for specific events or activities, just sign up and you can go to any talk.

We have elections during mini-UPA. You can run for one of the existing positions, chair, vice-chair, secretary. We also have other positions that we are introducing, including website coordinator, program chair and outreach coordinator. Please contact Chris if you are interested.

Job openings were announced. If you have job openings, please see the job board on the Boston UPA website.

We're currently planning on a Boston Interactions party (across mutiple groups) for July 22nd. Look for more details on this soon. We also have a workshop coming up after mini-UPA - Greg Raiz and Lynn Cherny will be presenting on "How to be a Consultant."

Presentation: "Usability Test Facilitation: Lessons from the Trenches" presented by Carolyn Snyder

One of the facinating things about usability is that different people do things differently. Some people have observers in the room, others like to seperate people with glass. So there are many different methods in the field.

Priorities of the Facilitator

The facilitator serves many roles through the course of a usability study:

  • Flight attendant role: is responsible for safety and confort of the user. Check for stress, offer a drink make them comfortable.
  • Sports caster role: Maximizes the flow of information to observers, probes, asks questions, reinforces actions.
  • Scientist role: Records issues and maintains the integrity of the data.
These different roles often overlap and shift so it's the job of the facilitator to play all these parts. When watching a usability study the different roles may be thinking different things. "Man, the developers need to see this!" said the sport caster.... "I wonder what she's going to do next?"" - said the Scientist.

There are two types of studies:

  • Formative - The purpose is to prototype, and improve the design of the product.
  • Summative - Is the evaluating of one or more products that are complete.
In Formative you may want to help the user to get at a partiular issue. In Summative testing you may not want to impact the test. The majority of Carolyn's personal experience is with Formative studies.

Tips for Eliciting Information
  • The recap - "A minute ago you said you'd try X - would that work?"
  • "Tell me more...."
  • The incomplete "So now you're going to..."
  • The mirror. "So what you're saying is..."
  • Ask why.... notice facial expressions
Don't over ask... "what are you thinking" you need to give them time to think... a little silence is OK.

Other Audience Suggestions
  • What are you expecting?
  • What are you thinking?
  • Show me that again.
  • Play dumb... I'm not sure. What do you think that does?
  • Why is this important?
Getting the Cork Back In... How to Get People to Stop Talking
  • There are some other things we'd like your opinion on...
  • Thank you for your feedback, in the interest of time we really need to move on.
  • Let's have you pause there and move on to something else.
Providing Reassurance
  • It's not just you - someone last week ran into the same thing.
  • Wow, we've made this harder then it needs to be. Thanks.
  • The people who developed this had it from the inside, your perspective is very valuable.
  • I know this is tough but you're doing exactly what we need.
  • Oops, we never explained X.
  • You're not going to hurt my feelings, tell me what works and what doesn't.
  • We're running the test to uncover problems with the software not with you.
How to Give Hints (General to Specific)
  • What are you trying to do right now?
  • What do you think the next step is?
  • Do you see anything on screen that might help you?
  • How about in the lower left?
  • What do you think this button does?

Following these tips and discussions, the group broke into about 10 sub-groups. Carolyn had several 5 minute scenarios that each group discussed. The topics were small scenarios of what would you do in certain usability situations. After the sub-group discussion, the meeting concluded with a follow up from each sub-group on what they learned.