Usability Assignment, this year's system: Windows Media Player ™ Microsoft

Your situation

Your group is a team of usability experts employed by the Ace Consulting Company (™) to evaluate the usability of Microsoft's Windows Media Player (version eleven¹).  You have been assigned by the VP of your company to determine if the Media Player meets the needs of the people who currently use the system.  In addition, your VP may be interested in seeing how quickly new users learn the use of this software. Your job is to study the program and find any problems that may arise when people are using the system that are caused by flaws in the design of the interface.  This will be done by observing people who are using the program while they are carrying out 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:

• Non-users, people who have never used any software to play CD's and audio files on their computer (including competitor programs such as the Real Player).
• Novice users, who just use the basic features of Windows Media Player e.g., they only use it for playing CD's and while they can play an audio file on their computer by clicking on it they can't do anything more advanced like creating a play list.
• Intermediate users who use many of the features available through Media Player (e.g., creating custom play lists, changing the information associated with each song such as the composer etc.) 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 the Media Player (e.g., they have a customized library that organizes music into custom categories, the properties that describe each audio file may have been modified to suit that person's tastes and preferences).
  

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.  In the case of the usability study I suggest that you break down a full task (a complete interaction with the system that you created for A1) into sub-tasks (like the ones that I have below).  Presenting a long and complex task may add extra level of complexity and unnaturalness (because this is a study rather than 'real life' a typical task will take longer) that is not faced by the typical user and may skew your test results.  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 tasks to give to participants; preferably, you should come up with even more.  (Just don't give out so many tasks to each participant that your test takes too long to run).  A good task is something that many end-users are likely to complete with Media Player; tasks should also be selected to investigate different (but still important or heavily used) parts of the system's features. (If you find that you have many tasks but it's time consuming to have every participant complete them all then you may want each person to only complete a subset of the entire set of tasks - but in the methodology section you should not only note this but also the background and skills of the participants who were to complete a particular set of tasks).

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: Some test participants may not feel comfortable having you see information about their Media Player configuration.  If this is the case, then you have to get things set up for them ahead of time (maybe use a sample configuration for all test participants) and add have the person use sample data that your group provides (audio files, CD's etc.).  Before you run the study ask your test participant if he or she feels comfortable using their own configuration.  The person must be free to either quit the study or to proceed by only using a sample configuration that you have already created. You may also wish to substitute the generic data that I use (e.g., "...insert your CD") with something meaningful to that individual (e.g., "...you are to insert your favorite CD: Let Go...").

Task 1. Play a CD using the Media Player.  You want to listen to some music on your computer. Insert your CD into your computer and play it using Windows Media Player.

Reason for choosing this task: Playing music is one of the core functions of the system and is often the primary (or sole) reason for using this program.

Task 2. Create and save a new play list.  You find that there is a selection of songs that you enjoy listening to while you work. Organize these songs into a play list so that you can hear them all whenever you wish. One you've created the play list, you are to start listening to the songs.

Reason for choosing this task.  One of the advantages of listening to music on a computer rather than a traditional stereo is the ability to organize information. Although this may not be a common task, for most people it's still handy to be able to categorize your music collection and to only listen to the music on particular lists.

Task 3. Copying the contents of a CD onto your computer and editing the details.  After looking at the details of the CD that you just ripped onto your computer you notice that the genre is wrong. Change the genre of the CD to the correct one.

Reason for choosing this task.  Each CD and audio file that is played via Media Player is classified according to a number of categories such as artist, genre, album etc. because different people may remember information differently (e.g., When looking for the song "Danger Zone" someone may recall that it was from the Tom Cruise movie "Top Gun" while another person may instead think of the artist "Kenny Loggins".) Media Player does try to reduce the amount of work required to classify and organize the user's audio collection by automating the process. However on occasion it does misclassify music so the person can't easily find what they are looking for under the category that they think it should be under and must change the default information.

Preparing Equipment

Test participants can either access Media Player from their own computer (ideal - but they must be comfortable with this) 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

• Applications that support the Media Player but are not a part of the application (e.g., 'Napster') or parts of the program that require additional hardware (e.g., the 'Sync' feature).
  

^{1 It's important that everyone evaluates the same version of because each version has different features.  I picked this version because it is the one that is installed in the WinXP labs in Math Sciences.  Make sure that your evaluation is not performed on a different version of the Media Player.}