Theresa Cunnington — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:17 GMT

I believe it is up to the facilitator to manage participant expectations when testing with wireframes. I recently tested wireframe content pages with a fully designed home page layout with great success.

I’ve tested with prototypes as basic as sketches on flipchart paper and created flyout menus with sticky notes and still received rich, valuable and useful feedback.

Baldly telling them not to focus on the design usually fails, but telling them that they are looking at the equivalent of a blueprint generally helps. I want them to find the bathroom for me, not comment on the lack of curtains.

Putting in dummy images tends to generate comments about the image and whether the participant likes it or not. Putting in a box with a comment inside that says ‘Image’ lets the participant assume that they will see a picture there, without them needing to process it.

As mentioned, you want to avoid lorum ipsum and use real text and I always visually distinguish links and buttons so they look clickable. Yes, there has been the odd participant who’s commented that they don’t like the ‘grey’, but that just indicates to me that I need to stop the test, manage the participant’s expectations again and then carry on, not that testing with simple wireframes is a bad idea.

In addition to Ben’s comments above, the problem with electronic prototypes is that the participant expects the entire prototype to work. They are constantly clicking buttons that don’t work and get a negative perception because the ‘site’ appears to be ‘broken’ all the time. Testing on wireframes manages their expectations. They know it isn’t finished and have lower expectations of what they can click on.

Testing with wireframes is an excellent way to obtain feedback on navigation, labelling, workflow and ease of use. Make sure they can find the bathroom first, then start decorating.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Theresa Cunnington