- Lightning talk and workshop on user-testing with Amin.
- Review: User Persona Homework
- Workshop: where does it hurt?
- Tutorials: formative feedback evaluation & planning
This morning we will be having a session on User Testing with Amin who runs Over the Arch a start up in Rave Incubation.
Before we create new work today, let's review your User Persona's from last week.
Imagine you're a person (or a persona) going through your experience map.
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Define a goal for your person(a). What does s/he want to achieve through the experience?
In other words, what is the destination s/he wants to reach in your experience map?
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Simulate the experience flow: go through each step with your team and discuss what happens to your person(a).
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For each step, identify potential pain points.
Add emoticons to each step, to visualise what's happening inside your person(a)'s head.
Going through the experience flow and identifying its pain points will allow you to uncover the riskiest assumptions in your idea.
An assumption is a prediction for what you think will happen. Will users really behave as you predicted in your experience map?
Your riskiest assumption is both core to your idea and most unknown, meaning you have little data to prove it's valid. It's important to always test your riskiest assumption first.
Here are three examples:
❌ NMM visitors want to see all of the hidden histories present within the collection through a mobile application
This is a solution-oriented assumption. Take a step back and ask, why?
❌ Because there isn't enough space in the galleries to showcase all hidden histories alongside all other artefacts
This is the business-perspective assumption. Not the customer's problem. Ask why again.
✔️ Because visitors are inquisative about hidden history stories within the museum
This assumption is defined from the customer's perspective (and should be linked to something visitors told you during your interviews).
Prototype, either on paper or digitally the part of your experience where the riskiest assumption lies.
Over the next four weeks you'll iterate and test your prototypes with real visitors at NMM, several times!
A few tips:
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Use realistic content.
As designers we're good at spotting placeholder text or images, however not everyone is familiar with them and sometimes people get hung up on details or ask
Why is that text in a foreign language?(lorem ipsum).Avoid lorem ipsum and stock photos like the plague!
You can find real hidden histories from the NMM collection here.
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How good is good enough?
You want to strike a balance between the time it takes to build the prototype, and how close to the real thing you need it to be for your user-testing to be effective.
When user-testing, it's crucial that you explain to people that this is not a finished product (even though it looks obvious to you) and that you are not testing colours, animations etc.
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Avoid linear click-throughs.
Even if there's one single call to action per screen, your prototype should offer a couple of options to users.
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Create reusable styles and symbols.
There are ways to do it in every prototyping tool.
If you catch yourself building the same button twice, that's an alarm bell: you should turn it into a symbol (or smart object, or whatever your tool of choice calls them).
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Use real devices when testing.
If you're designing a mobile app, get the prototype on your mobile. If you're designing for a tablet, get the prototype on a tablet.
Claim your team's tutorial slot on this GDoc!
1 week until the formative presentations on the 5th of Feb!
Let's plan the next 7 days & what you need to complete:
- On post-its, write down everything that needs doing
- Together we'll discuss priorities (what needs to be done first) and assign tasks to people.
Next Monday (5th Feb) you will present your work-in-progress at the NMM.
Remember, this is a formative presentation, which gives you a chance to get feedback from the museum experts and ask questions to them.
Talk about your research: what you learned from interviewing museum visitors, and what you observed at NMM and/or other museums.
Explain how your concept relates to the interests and needs of your audience.
You can use your elevator pitch, concept one-pager, experience map and prototype(s) to describe and visualise your idea.
Make sure you have some questions to ask to the museum experts. They're not there to judge you, but to help you make design decision about your idea. Think about how you can you take advantage of their experience and knowledge. What could you ask them? What could they help you with?
Go to NMM and user-test your prototype with visitors.
Do at least two sessions over the next two weeks, and test at least four people per session!
Take notes, write down your observations between one person and the next, record people (audio/video) if you can.
Write your observations about user-testing at NMM. What did you learn about your prototype and what did you learn about user-testing as a UX method?