The reading in the TCT this week makes me feel nostalgic. All the editing marks and proper editing procedures truly reminded me of elementary school when I first learned them. I had no idea that they would be staying with me this long and apply to so many things in life. Also, the reading from this weeks Instructor blog surprised me when it said “how long it took to break into the corporate mainstream.” It’s hard to imagine a better way to improve your product than to actually make it more usable. Nowadays making products more usable is a big industry itself (like tech support, for instance). For my usability testing I think a survey would give me the best feedback on my instructions. At first I thought a summary test would be better to give the user freedom of what to say, so one of the questions on my survey will allow for overall comments so I can, in a way, blend these two tests. The reason I want to have survey questions is so that I am sure to get feedback in certain areas of the instructions that I am looking for.
Some of the questions I plan to use in the survey are as follow:
What category would you place yourself in for these instructions (expert or novice)?
How long did it take you to complete the task?
Did any of the steps ever seems confusing or need better explaining?
Is it easy to return to the document and quickly find certain information about part of the process?
Was there an obvious sectioning off of each step?
Does the format of the document help or hinder in any way?
Does the layout of the document allow it to flow well with the process?
Is the technical language that I use proper considering the audience?
Do you have any suggestions, comments, or questions about my instructions? If so, please list them.
Feedback you want
I also choose to take the survey route for the instructional usability test, as I thought it would work best in my case. I like how you've outlined some possible questions here to include in your survey. I think some of them will work very well, and give you very meaningful responses, such "does the format of the document help or hinder in any way". I think you really want to stick away from simple yes or no answer questions and look for more open ended responses from the user. I also like the last question you have, because of it's very open-ended nature. I would definitely make sure to include this in your test.
Open R9
I also like the open ended questions better than the yes or no’s. That’s why it took me a little while to choose either a survey format or summary format. I think use of the open ended kind of questions blends the two and gets a better, more diverse group of responses to use. Thank you for pointing out that some of my questions could be more open because after reading back through them I realize that some of them guide to a specific answer more than they need to. I will definitely alter them while making the usability test for this project.
Shane
Usable huh?
The reading also reminded me of learning all of those grammar rules and mistakes we learned all of those years ago. It made me think a lot more about what I was writing. I agree with you when you talk about making things better by increasing the usability of the product. If something isn’t very “usable” then what is the point of even having it, especially if it is a set of instructions. I like the questions you want answered in your usability tests. Those questions seem like they would help a lot in terms of the feedback you will receive from the rest of us in the class.