Usability Testing: Microwave Edition
On the evening of April 13, 2017, our studio’s focus was on usability testing which involves giving a particular group of users tasks to determine the efficiency of a product’s performance. I was able to try this method by using a water bottle and by doing so, my group members and I listed the ways of what uses the water bottle can perform such as drinking, a place to hold the bottle, a cooling system, etc. After getting practice on usability testing, our studio watched a video of how other researchers conducted tests on a group of adult subjects eating different kinds of fruit and questioned how the subjects ate their fruit.
In my group project, we organized a usability test on three college students (2 male and one female) using a Danby model microwave in an apartment kitchen. We chose college students since most college students have background knowledge of using this type of appliance. To denote testing the microwave’s effectiveness, we developed three tasks for our users which included (1) lowering the power setting, (2) setting the timer to heat two beverages and (3) removing a plate and replacing the old plate with a new plate. We chose these tasks since most users would execute these tasks on a daily basis. On top of these three tasks, we had three different data types collected with each job. These data types include the number of buttons pressed, the time it takes to perform a task with a cut off time for 60 seconds and a level of struggle to fulfill a given task on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being easy; 5 being difficult). Pressing a lot of buttons, taking an enormous amount of time to cook a beverage and the lack of a microwave’s simplicity can determine how efficient the microwave performs.
We conducted our usability test in an apartment kitchen on April 14, 2017, with our three chosen college students. During the trial, one of us was the moderator and time tracker, while another group member and I were recording the data of our users. Once we completed our usability test, we found some interesting data of how users reacted to our given tasks which included that it took each user a while to lower the power settings. We looked back at our data and created a presentation to show some key aspects of the microwave’s efficiency.
Reflection:
I enjoyed conducting a usability test since its questions the effectiveness of a product’s ability to carry out the tasks of certain users. During our usability test, I found it interesting how none of our users bothered to use the beverage button since the responsibilities focused on cooking a beverage. They all decided to use the number buttons on the microwave to set the time to prepare a drink. I also like how usability testing helps designers to create more efficient ways of preventing such flaws by gathering information on test subjects. For instance, in our analysis, we found that it would be best if the microwave would display icons/pictures for the users to see where the beverage button is located.
Future Application:
I believe my group project presents an accurate illustration of how one can determine whether a product is efficient or not. The process gives the experience to understand what it is like to test out a product on a group of individuals who may or may not have experience using a particular product. By getting data from several different users, it helps to figure out what the flaws of the product were and how to fix those flaws in the future. Since most of our users had trouble with changing the power setting on the microwave, it can let the company know how to improve on the microwave’s use of simplicity. It would have been best to know how often each user performs the given tasks to get more background information from our users.
