[WEB4LIB] website usability testing administration questions

[Martin Courtois]

We just finished pre-testing our "live" usability tests (not card
sorting) and will do the "real" tests next month.  We have no budget for
this, no special team, no release time, etc., so we had to think in terms
of efficiency....what can we do in the least amount of time that will give
us the best data.  

Consequently, we decided not to do card testing, but rather to
focus on testing live subjects interacting with our web site.  We
developed a series of 12 questions which ask users to locate certain
pages, e.g., find the page where you would enter to search to find a
book.  For this round of tests, we decided to test only freshmen students,
as we want to see if the web site is usable by those who are least
familiar with the library.  We may test other groups in the future, but we
see freshmen as our "toughest" audience.  A faculty member has agreed to
let us use students from his freshman English class as subjects.  Our plan
is to conduct test with only 15-20 subjects.

We've developed a series of questions, a script for conducting the tests,
sheets for recording the path taken by subjects (no video recording), and
pre/post-test questionnaires.  I'd be glad to send these to anyone who's
interested.

As for citations, we've found these sources to most helpful:

Jared Spool.  Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide.  Morgan Kauffman,
1999.
Jakob Nielsen.  Designing Web Usability: the practice of simplicity.  New
Riders, 2000
Jeffrey Rubin.  Handbook of Usability Testing: how to plan, design, and
conduct effective tests.

Good luck!  Keep us posted on your progress....

Marty

***********************************************************
Martin Courtois
Science/Engineering Librarian
Gelman Library
George Washington University
2130 H St., N.W.
Washington DC 20052
Phone: (202) 994-0684
FAX: (202) 463-6205
E-mail: courtois at gwu.edu