Netdoctor.co.uk is a source for health tips, weight loss strategies, nutritional advice, and information about medicines and health conditions. Netdoctor provides articles on different topics ranging from “Mental Health,” “Healthy Eating,” “Family Health,” and more.
Usability testing is implemented to analyze the extent an interface facilitates a user’s ability to complete routine tasks. The test is conducted with a group of potential users, in other words, those within the target demographic, in either a usability lab, remotely over phone or e-meeting software, or on-site with portable equipment. Users will be asked to complete a series of tasks. The sessions are recorded and analyzed to identify potential areas for improvement on the website or app.
The Netdoctor.co.uk usability testers conducted an off-site usability test using a live version of Netdoctor.co.uk on the test administrator’s laptop. The same laptop recorded the screen, comments, and audio of the participant. The session captured each participant’s navigational choices, task completion rates, comments, overall satisfaction ratings, questions, and feedback.
The test administrator contacted and recruited participants by reaching out to people on campus who would likely use the website. The test administrator reached out to them in person and explained the test logistics and requested their availability and participation. Participants responded with an appropriate date and time. Each individual session lasted approximately 15 minutes. During the session, the test administrator explained the test session and asked the participant to fill out a brief background questionnaire. Participants read the task scenarios and tried to find the information on the website.
After each task, the administrator asked the participant to rate the interface on a 5-point Likert Scale with measures ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Post-task scenario subjective measures included questions asking the difficulty of finding information from the home page, the ability to keep track of the user’s location in the website, and accurateness of predicting which section of the website contained the information.
After the last task was completed, the test administrator asked the participant to rate the website overall by using a 5-point Likert Scale (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree) for 8 subjective measures including -Ease of use -Frequency of use -Difficultuy to keep track of location in website -Learn ability-- how easy it would be for most users to learn to use the website -Information facilitation-- how quickly participants could find information -Look and feel appeal-- homepage’s content makes me want to explore the site further -Site content-- site’s content would keep me coming back -Site organization
In addition, the test administrator asked the participants to the following overall website questions: -What the participant liked most -What the participant liked least -Recommendations for improvement
Usability materials: here
During the UT section, I recorded the participant’s verbal expression and was unable to document the facial expression, as I tried downloading the video softwares but none worked other the screen recording one. Because of these limitations, I made sure to remind the participant to speak a loud while completing the tasks as much as possible
The pilot test video: here
During the pilot test, I learned the importance of gathering user data and how much we can learn about a website’s usability from user testing. I was able to gauge user impressions on the website and what aspects I could fix regarding the look and feel of the homepage. Aside from aesthetics, I also learned the shortcomings of the website’s flow and labeling and how the user-flow was a bit difficult to follow and some labels were misleading. While I was able to gather a lot of useful data, in the future, I could improve my UT by giving a better description of the website at the start and having tasks that require going deeper in to the website that require more steps to complete. I would also ask users more self-reflecting questions regarding how they are feeling as they complete the tasks and questions regarding the user’s awareness in location of the website.