Non-users, people
who have an email account but do not have a Hotmail account.
Novice users, who just use
the basic features of the Hotmail e.g., they only read and compose mail.
Intermediate users who use many of the features available through Hotmail
(e.g., junk mail filtering) but don't know them
all.
Power users, someone who is familiar with
and uses on a regular basis all (or close to all) the features and functions
available through Hotmail.
It is up to your team of consultants to come with a set of typical tasks that should be completed by the
test participants. Although I have started all the groups off by providing
a list of sample tasks each group should add to this list. The assignment sheet has a
section
that indicates how you can go about this but you should already be
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.
Your group should come up with at least three other reasonable tasks to
give to participants; preferably, you should come up with even more. A good
task is something that many end-users are likely to complete with Hotmail; tasks should also be
selected to investigate different (but still important or heavily used) parts of
the system's features.
Here is a list of some sample tasks to start
you all out. Feel free to use them in your study but again make sure that
you write up some additional tasks of your own:
Sample tasks:
Note: Due to privacy concerns you may have to
have your test participants create a new Hotmail account that will be used just for this test. If this is the case, then you have to get things set up for them with the tasks that
require the participant to have mail already in their Hotmail account e.g., Set
things up by having the person complete task #1 and for the tasks that require
email to already be in their Hotmail account, another group member can send
email to this new account as you run the usability test or you can have the
person use another Hotmail account that your group has already pre-created
(which will be used by all test participants) and
already has emails sent to it.
Task 1.
Get a
Hotmail account. You heard from
a friend that Microsoft provides free email accounts. Unfortunately your
friend didn't provide you with any other details. Find the web
site that allows you to get this free email account and create an
account for yourself.
Reason for choosing this
task: The successful completion of
this task is a prerequisite for all other tasks. No matter how easy that
it may be to use the email service or how powerful the system is, all of this is
irrelevant if the person cannot determine where the Hotmail web site is and what
he or she needs to do in order to get a Hotmail account.
Task 2: Read your
email. Access and read your
Hotmail email for today.
Reason for choosing this
task. Obviously this is the most
important and frequently completed task for an email service.
Task 3. Clean
out your mailbox.
You find that it is necessary to clean out your mailbox. Go through your
inbox and get rid of all of your old emails (ones that were sent before today).
Depending upon the individual test participant you may be able to provide more
personalized compelling motivations e.g., the person gets a lot of spam each day
and has to do a mass deletion of his or her junk mail; because the person never deletes any email he or she
can never find the email that they are looking for so this person has to browse through a bunch of letters in
order to determine what should be deleted. Be careful that the test
participant does not lose any important personal emails just to complete this task!
Reason for choosing this
task: Although this is carried out on
an infrequent basis, because a long list of emails can make it hard to find a
particular one eventually every Hotmail user will have to get around to deleting unwanted
or old emails.
Preparing Equipment
Test
participants can either access a Hotmail account from their own computer (ideal) or
they can try to access it from your
own account (if you find it more convenient to use the computers in the lab).
Parts of the system to exclude from your the usability study
Any parts of the system that are not directly
related to the free email service provided with Hotmail e.g., the online
calendar or the tabs: "My page", "Shopping", "Finance", "People and Chat".
Email services are not displayed through a web browser e.g., mobile alerts