worthwhile user testing?

I recently read the results of some user testing we’d done on our website (part of a regular program of usability testing) and was shocked to realise that there were only 4 participants. That’s 4 out of the hundreds of thousands of users we have, and on the basis of their comments we are going to refine our website. Now whilst I agree with the principle of user testing I just don’t think that 4 is anywhere near enough to get a represeantative view of how the website works. It’s nowhere near a mathematically representative sample of our users and makes me wonder if it’s worth doing at all. I do realise that the more people you involve the more expensive it is and the longer it takes etc, but surely if you’re going to do it at all you want to make sure it’s worthwhile doing and will give you meaningful results?

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

I’ve just found that you can blog directly from Flickr - isn’t that cool!!

videos & bureaucracy

At the end of last year we were talking at MPOW about adding some rich media to our new website, ie that we would put a video on the website of one of the memebrs of staff talking a bit about what they do and showing one of the key resources they use. I volunteered to do the first one of these and in the beginning of January we made the film which is about one and a half minutes long. This film was added to the front page of the Library website yesterday - 5 and a half months after we created it! In the meantime it was added to Youtube where it has had 288 views so far!!

SPV E610

Now I’ve had my new phone a while I’ve had a chance to think about what I like about it and what annoys me:

• it’s smaller than my old PDA (and certainly smaller than phone & PDA together).
• the qwerty keyboard is quite useful, although the buttons are small and it has no predictive text - at least not that I’ve found.
• It took me ages to work out how to save a number from a call/text.
• Moving between folders in text messages is a bit clunky and if you move to the sent box and close it you go back there when you re-open it, which gets confusing as it doesn’t say at the top which folder you’re in.
• There’s only one input for power/synch/headphones, which means that you can’t use any old headphones to listen to music on it.
• The synch & power cables are losing their connection a bit and don’t always work without being held in.
• It won’t synch when the phone is locked or when it’s in any profile other than Normal.
• I needed to buy a new miniSD card to go in it (so tiny & 2GB!!)
• the sound is a bit tinny.

Other than that I’m quite happy with it - it does what I need it to do!

project work

I’ve been working half time on a project at MPOW to change our enquiry management system. It has been very interesting and a good learning experience, as I’ve been involved in sorting out the technical specification we need as well as coordinating training for everyone and keeping everyone aware of what was going on with the project. Balancing this work with my normal day-to-day tasks has been difficult at time, especially when I had little cover for that, but I have managed it and kept on top of everything. User training on the new system for the first group to change starts a week on Monday, and then we go live a few weeks after that, so we are coming to the end of this phase of the project. It does seem to have suddenly crept up on us that it is so close, but it seems as if everything is going to be ready in time.

One thing working on this project has meant is that I’ve spent less time working on the Helpdesk answering enquiries, and so I am starting to lose track a bit of what students and staff are having difficulty with. Dropping from two sessions a week to only one has made a huge difference, which I hadn’t thought it would do - makes me realise what a difference it must have made when the Heldpesk staff merged with the subject specialists.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: project, the end is in sight, change