Usability Testing Process

Planning a study

• Decide on the goals of the study
• Decide on the right method and participants needed to meet the goals
• Write study plan
• Have product owner review the plan
• Figure out where to find participants

Recruiting participants

• Find people using method decided in the plan
• Track people in the market map (People tab) and individual study participant index spreadsheet (only direct team can access because of PII)
• Send emails (limited access) asking people to participate
• Choose an interview time for people who accept
• Send [meeting maker] (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HRLBy-IigoNGlcAD9eY7pQKq9T95HL1NTLfiGLwsDg4/edit) (limited access) for interview and debrief

Writing the study guide

• Write study guide
• Ensure any prototypes meet the needs of the guide (i.e. you can get to everything users might encounter when completing the tasks)
• Have product owner review the guide
• Post guide to GitHub

Plan for note taking

• Check to see who has accepted the meeting invite and designate a primary note taker
• Create a notes doc by taking the study guide and putting in headings instead of detailed questions or copying one from a previous participant and removing all of that participant’s notes

Conducting the study

• Go through the interview guide during the study.
• Conduct debrief with the team after the study and put together summary and put the participant on the user type triangles.
• Update participant index and market map indicating the interview has occurred.

Analysis

• Copy all notes from each participant into a spreadsheet (limited access) and organize into common findings, tracking number of participants who encountered each finding
• Make sure no identifying information is in the notes docs. The only place to identify participants should be the participant index.
• Put together a version of the triangles with all participants in the study
• Pull out the highest frequency findings or things that answer specific questions asked in the study plan and create a findings presentation (limited access)
• Review findings with Data Display and Data Retrieval teams
• Add issues to GitHub to address findings
• Put bulleted summary of findings on GitHub

Updating ongoing findings documentation

• Update user types on GitHub with the new participants and make any adjustments to the scenarios, if needed.
• Add findings to the findings by topic spreadsheet (limited access) and github page.