Article Idea:
Usability testing for information & interaction
suggested by Donna Maurer on 2005/12/08
Much of the usability testing literature and discussion revolves around interactive applications – business apps, gadgets and interactive sites. However, many people I mentor, work with and teach are doing usability testing for information-rich websites. Usability testing of information-rich sites is very different to interactive applications – the scenarios used are different and there are significant challenges in making the test situation realistic.
I have a lot of experience conducting usability testing of bot types of systems, and the particular differences between them. If this is valuable, vote now and let me know ;)
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David Heller
2 Reputation points
Posted 2005/12/12 @ 07:09AM with
Hi Donna, I think I need to know more about the differences. Can you explain more. To me usability testing is quite a basic concept, so please let me know what subtleties I’m missing here. To me an information system is just another type of software. (dont’ get me wrong, it has many of its own properties, I just haven’t seen this from a usability point of view.)
Donna Maurer
165 Reputation points
Posted 2005/12/13 @ 14:04PM with
It’s hard to explain it more in this limited space. That’s why I suggested an article ;)
But, when testing an information system (one without interactive elements), the main differences are: * defining tasks is different (writing a task makes everything a ‘known-item’ task) and testing exploratory tasks is more difficult * it is often more about testing the content than the site elements, and I find more usability problems within content than anywhere else * it is difficult to get good content coverage * collecting metrics such as time-on-task is less relevant * people often care less and use informational sites less infrequently * paper prototype testing is harder
etc…