Each year, NYU’s group for IT professionals, TorchTech, hosts an annual Share Fair, which showcases technology projects across the university. This year, we at Digital Library Technology Services used the opportunity to promote Guerrilla Usability Testing, using the ENM search prototype as a test subject. We set up two laptops at our assigned table area, attached a fabulous sign (see above), and, for 2 hours, marshalled passers-by into 4- 10 minute testing sessions. We asked users to complete a few simple tasks (such as “Search for ‘poet'”) while speaking aloud their impressions, assumptions, and expectations.
Some ideas we hoped to seed:
- one can do this kind of testing anywhere, with minimal requirements or preparation
- one can do this with a product that is still in progress
- one can use these sessions to share design and development ideas among colleagues, and to break down silos
We also, happily, achieved some secondary goals – namely, showing off the unique tech here, including our blazing fast search results, and getting more data points on how users comprehend the interface. This approach of ebook discovery using back-of-book indexes is unique, and our goal is a user experience that intuitively makes sense, operates smoothly and as expected, and provides exciting, useful results. We now have a few more ideas about what works (intrigues, pleases, or helps) and what doesn’t (or simply isn’t noticed.)
Many thanks to our colleagues from the NYU technology community for generously sharing their time and thoughts with us!
PDF handout here: TorchTechShareFair2018_Guerrilla_UX_testing.pdf