Subject: UWired Usability Committee: 11/27 Meeting Notes


Next Meeting: Monday, January 8, 2001, 9-10am, Mary Gates Hall Room 015L

Tracy McIntyre, Project Manager for the UW Yellow Pages
(http://www.washington.edu/admin/uwyp), described the process she went
through in conducting usability tests of the Yellow Pages. Attached to
this message are three Word documents - the design questions being
explored, the test questions, and findings of the study.

o In August, Tracy met with C&C's Kathryn Sharpe and Carol Robinson to 
   discuss the best approach and methods. As an initial step, 
   Tracy wrote up a list of questions (questions.doc) that she
   wanted to answer.
o In additional meetings with Kathryn and Carol in September,
   a user test questionaire (test.doc) was developed. Hardcopy
   mockups of alternative designs were created. One of the tasks
   in the test is to compare the current design with the 
   alternative design.
o A demo user test was conducted in early October to test the test.
o Eleven user tests, each half an hour long, were conducted 
   during a single week in mid October. Tracy went to each
   person's office or cubicle to conduct the test. Each
   test was recorded on a small tape recorder. The biggest
   challenge was getting people to talk about what they  
   were thinking as they were doing the tasks.
o Findings (findings.doc) from the user tests included (1) most were not
   aware the Yellow Pages were available, (2) most felt a yellow 
   pages would be useful, (3) most assumed it would have a wide
   scope covering topics for faculty, staff, students, and public,
   and (4) most did not understand or doubted the validity of information
   in a column intended to indicate how quickly a service would respond.

In general, Tracy found conducting the user test was very useful 
for several reasons:
  o The test gave actual user experience to back up design ideas
    which made advocacy for design changes more persuasive.
  o The test clarified when design intuition was right and when 
    it was wrong. 



 |- Rick Ells - 543-2875 - rells@cac.washington.edu - Rm 011S MGH Bldg -|
 |-                http://staff.washington.edu/rells/                  -|









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