It’s important to ask the right questions…
Posted on July 30th, 2007 in Usability | 1 Comment »
Ask Great Questions — “When testing people in front of the computer screen, you need to guide them in some way through the process. The usability goals need to be operationalized in order to check if the product meets them. Operationalization means to take an abstract goal and describe it in terms that can be measured and observed.”
Good word: operationalized.
It is critically important to ask the right questions because that’s how you get the right answers. You have to know what you want to get; what are your goals. Questions follow those goals you’ve set. Then bam, get what you need.
One Response
Hi John,
I’ve been doing some remote automated usability testing of late. I have to say asking those questions is very difficult indeed! I generally use the same principles as for face to face.
You need to make sure people are clear on what you want them to do without giving it away.
Then you need to make sure the follow up questions don’t put words in the participants virtual mouths.
Another struggle is not asking too many questions, and maintaining the participants attention!
The overall difficulty is how you get them to provide useful feedback when you are not sitting next to them to understand why they have done certain things.
As with any testing you always need to triangulate on method with another. That said the power of quantitative data to get the clients attention is awesome!