SD 142 Solution

User Testing

1.

(1 mark) As a designer, can you test your design on yourself using yourself as a user? _______

No, designers are not users.

(5 marks) Give five reasons why or why not?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

You can use any five of the following reasons, at 1 mark per reason.

1. People vary in size and background and skill set, a designer is only 1 person.

2. Designers are expert with their design and don’t see it the way a novice would.

3. Designers operate their design from knowledge in the head. New users operate designs from knowledge in the world.

4. Designers never make the same kind of errors a novice would make.

  1. Designers don’t need interfaces to their designs because they understand the workings of the design. (or have a complete mental model of the design)

 

 

11. In the case study, Set Phasers on Stun, an operator of a radiation machine makes an error and corrects it quickly. The correction is faster than the design allows for, sending the machine into an unexpected and dangerous mode.

 

Explain how the designers could have anticipated that this situation could happen.

They could have anticipated this situation by doing user testing, particularly a GOMS or keystroke analysis (1). By counting keystrokes (1) and comparing them with standard performance times (1), they could have determined her total time (1) to be under seven seconds and that the error mode would occur.

Hint: Make sure that when you refer to a method (e.g. GOMS) you explain that you know what it is. There are often marks for the explanation! Simply writing "doing a GOMS analysis" would have earned you 1/4 for this question.