The future shop is one of Canada’s largest retail electronic chains. The chain was established in 1982 and now consists of over 80 stores across the country. The products include many different kinds of electronics such as computers, audio and video equipment, but also home appliances such as refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and microwaves.
Future
Shop online (http://www.futureshop.com)
was an internet-based expansion of the traditional retail operation of the
company. Its purpose is to allow people
to browse and buy products without having to go into a retail outlet.
You
are to take the role of consultants who have been assigned by the VP Marketing
of your company to determine if the existing customer base of future shop, who
are primarily young adults will be able to use the website to complete typical
shopping-related tasks. Additionally, she may be interested in seeing how new
customers interact with the site as well.
Your job is to study the site and find any problems that may arise when
people are using the site caused by flaws in the design of the interface. This will be done by observing people who
are using the site doing a set of pre-created tasks and then recommending ways
in which these flaws may be corrected.
Try to get as wide a mix of test participants within this range as
possible (e.g., regular in-store customers who have never used the web site
before, regular and experienced users of the site, someone who has never went
into a future shop but may be future customer etc).
It
is up to your team of consultants to come with a set of typical tasks that
should be completed by the test users.
The assignment sheet has a section that indicates how you
can go about this, and you are already familiar with task descriptions from
Assignment 1. As well, the experimenter should try the system ahead of time,
becoming as familiar with it as possible. The experimenter should come up with at
least four other reasonable tasks to give to participants; preferably, your
group should come up with even more. A
good task one that is likely to be used by many end-users. Tasks should also be
selected to investigate different (but still important or heavily used) parts
of the system functionality.
Just
to start groups up I have included a list of some example sample tasks:
Task
1. Finding the site. You were up late one night watching TV and you saw a
commercial which said that the Future Shop had a website where you could browse
and buy electronics. However, you
cannot remember the web address. Use
whatever mechanism you want in order to find their main homepage and display it
in your web browser.
Reason
for choosing this task: No matter how good the website
may be designed it is only of value if people can actually find it. The main point of this task is to determine
the different ways that people will employ to find the site (e.g., use a search
engine to find it, type the url in) and how successful they are at it (if they
can easily find it with search tool, if they are able to correctly type in the
url on the first try etc.).
Task
2. Browsing for a new TV. Your old TV has had it, the picture shown on the
screen is only 3 inches high and the audio is totally incomprehensible. You are thinking of getting a new TV but are
not sure what you want to buy. You are
partial towards Sony products so you probably want the new set to be this brand
name. Based on your budget (approximate
$300 - $600 hundred dollars) you figure that you can only afford a 20-inch
model (but you may be willing to go with another brand name if you can get a
bigger set within this price range).
Try to find a list of TV’s that meet these criteria (brand, price, and
size).
Reason
for choosing this task: This is a typical task, in which the person may not be entirely sure
of what they want. Some shoppers only
have a rough idea of what they wish to buy.
So, they often go into stores just to browse by walking up and down the
aisles to see what is available within their rough limits.
Task
3. Going price shopping for specific
products. You want to buy a new
monitor for your home computer. After
reading several reviews about various brands, two models stand out: the lcd1830
& the lcd1850x. You want to find
the prices of these models of monitors.
Reason
for choosing this task: Price checking is a task that
some shoppers frequently engage in.
People know exactly what they want and they want to quickly check the
price.
Task
4: Going on a spending spree. You’ve been
working hard and now you feel that it is the time to indulge yourself. You want to go online and to buy yourself a
pile of games:
·
The
Sims: House Party (PC version)
·
MechCommander
II (PC version)
·
Pac
Man Adventures in Time (PC version)
·
Test
Drive 6 (Sony Playstation version)
When
see actually the final price you decide that this is too much for you too
spend. So you decide you no longer want
the ‘Test Drive 6” game and you decide to buy “Pac Man” later. You put the Pac Man game on the list of
things that you wish to buy so that you track keep of for later (Note: Make sure that test participants
do not actually end up buying all this stuff – don’t take the test to purchase
step).
Reason
for choosing this task: Sometimes people go shopping,
wishing to buy several items only to find that it costs more than they might
have intuitively expected. In such
cases, they may decide to only buy a subset of the original list and decide
either not to buy the other items or else put the other items on a list of
things that they wish to buy for the future.
Other
tasks to develop: To narrow the focus of this assignment, constrain the usage of the
system to the buying, browsing, and searching aspects of the site. Don’t worry about other parts such as order
tracking (since participants should actually be buying stuff for the sake of
test).
Either
test participants can use a browser from their own account or you can set up a
browser from your own account. If you
are reusing a browser (e.g., in your login account) clear the browser's cache
before each session, as you don't want the link highlights to give the user
clues of where to go. Depending on how you run participants, you may want to
have a browser (e.g., Netscape or Internet Explorer) up and ready at the home
page for the Future Shop (http://www.futureshop.com/),
although I recommend that you have people start cold for at least the first
task (e.g., how to find the site.).
The
site may be busy or there may be slow network connections. Slow system response times are a part of
system usability and shouldn’t be ignored.
Administer
the pretest questionnaire. There should
be a reason for asking the questions that you ask – don’t ask for information
that have no bearing on the test and which you won’t be using. Typical questions in the pretest will ask
about the person’s computer experience, their internet and browser experience,
their experience with this particular web site and if this person actually does
shop at the Future Shop or similar types of stores.
At
the end of the test, administer the post-test questionnaire. This second questionnaire should include
questions that ask about people’s satisfaction with the system both in broad
terms e.g., “I would rather shop online than go into a retail store” e.g., “I
would never want to use the online system”, and with more specific ratings
(Strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly
disagree). Also, be sure to administer
the usability
instructions to subjects, as indicated in the handout.
Note: the reason you are doing this is to see what initial conceptual model people
have of the system, based upon their prior experiences and their interpretation
of the visuals on the screen. You are looking for places where the model is
incorrect. Start doing this as soon as they get to the main screen of the
homepage of Future Shop.