Testing the prototype (with staff)
A couple of weeks ago we put the first public prototype of the new website online, initially to gather feedback from Museum staff and volunteers. We asked users to complete the following tasks:
Find an event to recommend to someone visiting the Museum & Art Gallery with their young children in February
Point a member of the public to a suitable venue which could be hired for a drinks reception
Show a member of the public how they can make a donation through the website.
We asked people not to pay too much attention to visuals as these are still very much work in progress. Later this week we will collate the feedback into a single document and review what people said, identify underlying issues and decide on solutions.
A lot of the time user feedback comprises both issues faced and proposed solutions. We have to be really careful to get to the root of the problem. Sometimes the solution proposed by the user will be the right thing to do, other times it could be clouded by personal experience or bias. This isn’t to knock the ideas of anyone who helps in testing as feedback is always valuable; but those viewing the website at this point don’t always have the full context and probably haven’t been involved in the user research that came earlier in the project.
The process we follow when reviewing user feedback is as follows:
What exactly was said?
What is the actual issue behind the comment?
Is this issue something we need to address?
Are there any potential issues with any proposed solution?
What alternative solutions are there?
What will we do about this comment?
This is only one way to test a website. We are also planning to carry out usability testing with members of the public. That round of testing will differ in that we’ll ask users to carry out a task and observe them as they use the website. This is a very different process as we see how easy people find using the site first-hand rather than asking them to recall their experiences later on.