Task Design Methodology in Usability Testing in Singapore

user experience
4 min readJan 25, 2018

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Usability is an important index used to measure the quality of products, from the perspective of users to determine the effectiveness of the product, learning, memory, efficiency, fault tolerance and satisfactory level. Usability testing is one of the ways to continually gain user feedback in iterative design and continuously optimize product design based on user feedback. Its purpose is to establish evaluation criteria, find out as much as possible usability issues, and guide the design and improvement of product interface, as much as possible to improve the usability of the product quality.

If you want to learn more about the planning, execution, and analysis of usability testing, a quick and easy usability testing article will give you some insight and inspiration. This article only for usability testing an important part — the design of the test task, in-depth discussion.

Why talk about the design of test tasks alone, it is because the test plan directly affects the test results and work efficiency, and task design is the most important test plan, but also the most test using the experience of researchers part.

Children participated in the usability test all know, the test, the host often to the user to arrange a series of tasks, through the user’s operation to find problems in the product.

Why do you need a task design?

The task of testing is to give users the motivation to use the product in a laboratory environment in order to allow users to demonstrate their operation, motivated by reasonable motivation.

How to design a task?

In general, the less common practice of using a user researcher is to write down the tasks one by one according to the functions of the product. The common method is “Please ××××.” This approach is not wrong in itself, but it’s easy to get caught up in the mistakes of designing tasks for a user to use a feature. In fact, more important than the function itself is the user’s use of the target. Therefore, in the design of the task, we must constantly torture ourselves: “I designed the test task really reflects the user’s actual goals?cccc” Especially in the face of unfamiliar products.

For example, NetEase smartphone version of the mailbox test, I have encountered some obstacles. Since I am not a target user of a mobile email, I often use my computer to log in to my email in my office environment. There is almost no demand for mobile email. Therefore, it is hard to imagine what kind of user motivation to use this product. At this time, several questions emerged in my mind:

  • What kind of people may use this product?
  • Which features are most likely their common features?
  • How will they use these features?
  • For them, what is the relationship between function and function?

In order to clarify the concept, I consulted with a longtime colleague in the e-mail department who was responsible for mobile phone products. According to her feedback, there were users who are in need of mobile e-mail, who have more outdoor activities and frequent mail exchanges during working hours. One of the more prominent is the foreign trade industry, they often have the mailing of the product quotations. So, there is the following task design:

For detailed steps on task design, see the article “Simple and Fast Usability Testing.”

What should you pay attention to when designing a task?

  • Full coverage of the functional areas of interest

In the design task before a list of tasks, as shown below, after the task is designed, one by one contrast to ensure that the task covers all concerns.

  • User operation comfortable and natural, in line with normalcy

The order of tasks is as close as possible to the typical user’s typical stream of operations. Or to the above example, the user flow in the mailbox is generally [log in — view the Inbox — read unread mail — to deal with some mail — (write mail — save mail — send mail)], try to avoid letting the user feel To unexpected.

  • Appropriate to add some drama

As mentioned earlier, the test task is to give users the motivation to use the product in the lab environment. In order to make the motivation description more rationalized, we often design the task to be “story-oriented” so as to help the user better integrate into the product usage.

How to evaluate the task design is good or bad?

After the task is designed, we must go through the 1–2 test. This is the same reason to do the product. We ourselves are not necessarily the target users, so the task design needs to be verified by the target user. In the test, if you see the task design after the user said to you, “I usually encounter this situation often!” Hawk hi, you are successful!

Summarize the main usability testing task of the design of a sentence: Focus on the actual use of the target.

read more: https://medium.com/@ysfqwe1/website-user-experience-design-interactive-experience-in-singapore-c2013ff81d83

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user experience
user experience

Written by user experience

What is user experience? I think, in the narrow sense, user experience refers to the subjective feeling of the user’s visual and easy use of a product.