Website Usability Guidelines

About Usability Testing (4 of 6)

Create the Usability Final Scenarios

What is a scenario? The scenarios are the means for telling participants what tasks to do. During the test session, you give the participants the scenarios either in writing or verbally, one at a time, as the participant is ready to do that scenario.

What makes a good scenario for usability testing? A good scenario for usability testing gives the participants:

• A goal/task (what to do or what question to find the answer for)
• Data, if needed, that a real user would have when going to the site to do that task

You can give the scenario as just the statement of the goal/ task or you can elaborate it a little with a very short story that adds motivation to get to the goal.

Participants enjoy the story-type scenarios, but keep them short. You do not want reading the scenarios to take up much session time. You also want to be sure that all participants understand the scenarios.

What does NOT go in a scenario for usability testing? The scenarios do not include any information on how to accomplish the task. That is what usability testing is for - to show you how the participant goes about accomplishing the task.

What if users have difficulty understanding a scenario? To make sure that your scenarios are clear, try them out in a pilot test for the participant to read. If you find that participants do not understand a scenario, rewrite it. If you find that many of your scenarios are not clear to participants and that you must rewrite several, do a second pilot test.

After running the first test with these scenarios, it is usually a good idea to go back and put a copy of the final set of scenarios (those actually used in the test) into the test plan.

Should the tester write down how to accomplish the task? Yes. In the material that observers and note-takers use (but that the participant does not see), you should include the pathways to accomplish the task. This helps observers know what to expect and saves considerable time for note-takers.