这是一个令人谦卑和迷人的经历:

• 哦，好吧，你要这么做吗?我们做事的方式都略有不同!
• 看到人们在屏幕上看到和看不到的东西真是太迷人了!
• and humbling -了解你的一个‘真实用户’很好地提醒了我们为什么存在以及我们的服务如何影响人们的生活。我们如何提供服务真的可以帮助或阻碍学生的成功。

测试应该始终以任务为中心

您需要确定您正在测试服务的哪个方面。我们总是提前准备好场景和任务。我们测试用户是否能够完成一些任务，并记录他们尝试完成这些任务的旅程。

容易的测试陷阱

• 询问他们喜欢什么和不喜欢什么 -一致的用户会说他们喜欢一个在测试中被证明是他们忽略或觉得讨厌的功能。 Beware of soliciting opinion and paying too much attention to it.
• Leading the user: giving tips or hints, or an explanation or why something works in a certain way. The tester must stay neutral and fade into the background – even though it might feel counter-intuitive and unhelpful!

We were testing a mature student who had just finished a law degree and was considering a PHD, and so up until very recently had been using the Library Catalogue every day but at the moment said she uses it weekly.

It was lovely to have a real person and their experiences to put into the ‘box’ of ‘mature student’ and make it real.

Much more testing will be done this week, with postgraduates, undergraduates, mature and part time students represented. All of them will be different, yet we will find common issues that we can address to improve the system.

We hope many of our colleagues will find the time to join a user testing session. There is no substitute for seeing user testing first hand.

It’s an exciting time to be in Information Services as our User Experience Developer Jonathan Thirlwell is spearheading a User Experience group of interested staff across the Uni. If you’re interested in joining, contact Jonathan. He also contributes to the Web Development Team Blog.

Image shared via Creative Commons Licence: Copyright Sonny Abesamis