Scheduling

The usability test sessions must be scheduled three weeks before the actual testing because many individuals must be coordinated and space made available. Undergraduate team members must coordinate with you. Also, space for the testing must be coordinated. Finally, I must seek participants for the tests.

Number of Sessions and Team Assistance

You should schedule 6 test sessions for the thirteenth week of the semester. Each session is an hour and at least two team members should assist you during each session. Each team member should attend at least three usability test sessions. You can use the two team members to help with each session. One student can demonstrate the application to the participant and the other students can take notes. Sometimes the application does not work properly so you will need students to help repair the application. I recommend not scheduling any testing before the 10 am because students like to sleep in late.

Google Form

I will email you access to google form that the participates will use to reserve a test session. You should enter your testing schedule in the google form. Open the google form, and you’ll notice that there are multiple sheets named Grad-1, Grad-2, etc. Click on the sheet corresponding to your grad number. At the top of the sheet, enter the app name, app description and your name in the adjacent cells. Lower there are columns labeled, “Day of the Week”, “Date”, “Time”, “Location”. List your usability schedule below these column headings. You’ll notice that there are also columns labelled “Participant Name”, “Email” and “Course.” Leave the cells under these columns empty. They are cells that the participants will fill out to reserve a testing session.

Test Locations and Conflicts

While you make your schedule, you need to also consider the location of your testing. Make sure you have access to these classrooms during your scheduled hour for your usability tests.  Popular locations are the classrooms for our course during the class hour. I estimate two usability tests can occur in each of the rooms at the same time. Consequently, not all graduate students can use our classroom. Before fill out your schedule in the Google Form, you should check the sheets for other grad students to see if they have already reserved the location. Grad students that complete the schedule early have an advantage. If there are conflict then I will resolve them by which grad student emailed me first.

Email Me

Email me (pastel at mtu.edu)  as soon as possible that you have entered your schedule in the google form with the subject line:

cs5760 – Evaluation Assignment 3

Please do this as soon as possible so that I can distribute the testing schedule to potential participants. I cannot distribute the testing schedule until after I have heard from all the graduate students.

During the Testing

The day before the a participant’s session, you should send them an email reminder of the testing including the time and location.

You will notice that the final column in the form is labelled “Attended.” During the testing you, should mark in corresponding cell if the participant attended the session or not. You can write in the cell “yes” or “no”.

When all of the testing is done, I will notify the instructors, and they can give the students that participated in the testing extra credit.