Reflection #5 – Moderation

This week, I was given a script and told to moderate a usability study. This is my favorite part of the whole research process: actually getting to talk to a user and watch them use the product. It’s the culmination of all of the prework and meetings, and because of that I make sure usability is a true event for me, my team, and the team I am working with. The assignment didn’t require that I write a script, but I did need to moderate and record a sessions with an actual user investigating the Papa John’s website and ordering experience.

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Reflection #4 – Qual. and Quant. Metrics

This week’s assignment was all about the difference between qualitative and quantitative usability metrics. When do you use one over the other? What works better? What about subjective vs. objective measurements? And what are the benefits and limitations of each of the different methods for a given scenario? In Jakob Nielsen’s article on usability metrics, he mentions that qualitative measures provide more bang for the buck at understanding the low hanging usability fruit. But the investment in quantitative metrics can be beneficial in its use to track progress across iterations.

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Reflection #3 – “Thank & Terminate”

This week our assignment was to create a screener script with qualification questions, and a moderator’s guide with tasks and scenarios. It was perfect for me, because I was working on the same sort of things for a project I am doing at work. The interesting thing about this assignment was we worked in groups to source our questions and tasks.

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