scottmacleodsblog

This was the final week for Usability I. Our Final Report is due by midnight. I’ve already submitted mine. I was, coincidentally, on vacation for the past three days. Good thing too. Based on looking at the assignment requirements I didn’t expect it to take long to complete since a large portion of the report is comprised of documents we’ve already assembled throughout the course. But, as my wife strolled on the beach, I found myself in the hotel room for three eight to 10 hour days, listening and watching all the participant videos, trying to decide which tasks to measure and how to document everything.

I really enjoyed it and find it a bit strange and surprising that I didn’t resent missing out on my vacation. I must (finally) be studying the right field.

 After watching all of the videos posted by other students and seeing where the pain points were, I decided to try and stick with the same demographic (novice user) that my team had been assigned to. I was able to find five novice user videos and decided that the most important thing for someone who had never ordered pizza online was, well, to be able to place an order online. Papajohns.com’s Order Now button is very well placed and sized for just such a task and participants had no trouble finding and using the button.

 The second task I chose to analyze was ordering a specialty pizza. This task contrasted well with the first because it was difficult for most participants who tried to follow the instructions literally. This is because there is no label on papajohns.com that says “Specialty Pizzas”.  This was a good example of making sure that your labels match your customers mental models. In this case I don’t think customers come to the site wanting to order a “specialty pizza”, rather they have a specific pizza in mind or they can get suggestions from the site itself.

 Overall a really good final assignment to pull together a lot of what we’ve learned over the past seven weeks.

This week’s assignment in Usability I was about measuring the results of usability and the difference between quantitative and qualitative measurements.

Despite their power and precision, I have to admit to a deep distaste for most things quantitative. Over the years I’ve taken four courses in statistical methods, two in undergrad and two at the graduate level. I received A’s in all but one of those classes. I have great respect for data and the ability to slice it in different ways, yet it is simply a way of thinking that I do not enjoy.

As part of this week’s assignment we had to choose a quantitative method of measuring the usability of a website. I know that doing that is valuable, I just don’t like it. Working with tax software, I see the same split. We have visual and interaction designers that are left-handed, right-brained folks. I like them. I get along well with them. Then we (because it’s tax after all) have those that love their calculations. Although I manage to get along with those folks, I typically don’t enjoy being around them.

I guess I’m glad that usability has room for both types, but if you tell me you’d rather focus on human emotion than data, I’ll probably enjoy being around you.

I have moderated several usability studies and watched dozens of other, professional, moderators conduct usability studies, before the one I did yesterday for Usability I. So there weren’t a lot of surprises. One was how difficult Papa John’s made it to report a complaint on line. You’re never going to get true customer feedback with a process so difficult. The other thing that surprised both me and my participant was how hungry we were for pizza by the time we were done!

I actually thought I did better than I expected. I am by no means a born moderator. I am not an extrovert, not much of a “people person” and find that, unless I’ve had some sort of creative input into what I’m watching, or working on, with the participant, I find usability sessions a bit dull. This is less true of this particular exercise than usability at work. The usability joke at work is: What’s more boring than doing your own taxes? Answer: Watching someone else do theirs.

It was fairly easy for me to remain unbiased. I don’t have a lot of emotional investment in Papa John’s one way or the other, and even during parts where my participant was very critical of the site, it wasn’t personal to me. This has not always been true in previous usability studies where the participant is actually criticizing something I worked on, especially if I put a lot of thought and effort into it.

I think I cut my participant off just once and tried to make up for it. For the most part, I think I allowed my participant to speak and tried not to introduce bias in the way I asked the questions. My responses were intended to be encouraging without being judgmental and often were simple acknowledgments like “OK” or “I see.”

Altogether, a pretty good session with some useful insights, especially on the positive side: Seeing the motion graphics of adding toppings to your pizza order and on the not-so-positive: trying to register a complaint with the corporate office.