[Podcast Transcript]

Welcome to Screen Space, your podcast about creating usable, accessible, effective, and efficient web, blog, and digital media design for the everyday (and non-expert) designer. This is episode 17 of Screen Space ldquo;Usability #38; Usability Testing 101 Part 3mdash;Deciding what to Test.rdquo; In this episode, I discuss the second major step of usability testingmdash;deciding what to test. I will talk about the processes of selecting purpose, objectives, type of test, and tasks. There will be three more parts to this series, where I will discuss preparing for testing, conducting the testing, and analyzing #38; utilizing the results.

If you have not listened to the previous parts of this series, you may want to go back and listen. In the first part, Screen Space 11: Usability #38; Usability Testing 101, I discuss usability, provide a definition of usability testing, and outline the steps to conducting usability test. In Part 2, Screen Space 12: Usability #38; Usability Testing 101 Part 2mdash;Selecting Users, you can find information on selecting your users for usability testing. You may also find Screen Space 10 on User-Centered Design helpful.

I am your host, Dr. Jennifer L. Bowie. I am Dr. Jennifer L. Bowie. I conduct research and have taught in areas related to digital media, web, and blog design. Previously I mentioned being an assistant professor at GSU. However, this is no longer the case and I am currently looking for a job in usability, user-centered design, and/or social media. Stay tuned and Irsquo;ll provide details at the end of this podcast.

A quick welcome to my new listeners from Rock Island, Illinois; Sunnyvale, California; and Middletown, New Jersey.nbsp; Enjoy, design well, and let me know if you have any questions or topic requests. Irsquo;d love to hear from you!

In this episode, I will cover how to decide what to test including choosing an overall purpose, determining objectives, deciding the type of test, selecting tasks, and choosing performance objectives. I will use the same example I used in episodes 11 and 12mdash;testing a photography blog. Wersquo;ll imagine we have a photography blog with a decent sized audience. We want to get more users and see how useable the blog is for the current users.nbsp; In 12, I presented two user profiles for this blog. The first is ldquo;fansrdquo;mdash;middle aged, middle class users who come to the blog to look at photos, get tips on taking better photos with their digital point-and-shoot cameras, and possibly buy or download some of the photos. The second profile is ldquo;photographersrdquo;mdash;a slightly younger group of users with more tech savvy and photography experience who are amateur photographers themselves. They come to the site to see what other photographers are doing, to build the photography community and support your work, and to get and share more advanced photography tips. Letrsquo;s select the first profile, fans, to test.

So, letrsquo;s get started with Part 3mdash;Deciding what to Test.

Choosing an overall purpose

This may be the easiest step in deciding what to test. Think about the overall purpose of the usability testing you want to conduct. Why are you doing the testing? This can be very general or quite focusedmdash;it depends on your purpose. It could be as broad as ldquo;find out how usable our new website isrdquo; or as narrow as ldquo;determine if users find the information they need on the help pagerdquo;. For our photography blog, letrsquo;s go general with ldquo;determine the usability of our blog for our users.rdquo;

Determining objectives

Next, we need to determine the objectives of the testing or determine what exactly we are testing for. Our general and vague purpose is not a good objective. So, we need to break this purpose into a few specific objectives. These objectives will likely be questions. They could be objectives like:

Does our search engine provide usable results in ...