Thursday 29 September 2011

Summary of Contextual Inquiry Results

The contextual inquiry took place over the week of August 15-19.

The original plan was to recruit 4 students as testers, chosen to match four general "profiles" developed for the purpose of usability testing and to cover a range of user capabilities. The four profiles were:

EXEX - expert at mobile device, expert at library services
NONO - novice at mobile device, novice at library services
EXNO - expert at mobile device, novice at library services
NOEX - novice at mobile device, expert at library services

The students were sorted into these profiles based on the self-reported survey and questionnaire data.

Four students were signed up, but two did not show up to the initial device checkout appointment. A third student was brought in ad-hoc to try and make up some of the difference, but a fourth was not found in time.

I have assembled the relevant profile data for each contextual inquiry tester and made them anonymous: Profile Tester 1 | Profile Tester 2 | Profile Tester 3

The devices were checked out at the Monday session and students were asked to sign consent and release forms. They were also briefed on their tasks and desired focus for testing, outlined in the Student Tasks (final) document.

Over the course of the week, Amanda Hardy checked in with the Moodle module and posted several loose prompts for feedback. The students developed their own reporting format and left some comments in that way, which were collected and brought to the final interview session.

The final interview session was loose and relatively conversational, but followed the general themes in the Individual Interviews Notes document.

Generally speaking there was very little contextual feedback even with prompting and direct questioning, most of what the testers commented on were functionality issues. The full list of derived issues and contextually-significant data, as well as some thoughts as to why so little was found, is collected in the Contextual Inquiry Results document.

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