Post formats Usability test – round 4

Here’s another round of post formats usability tests (testing against the UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. currently in trunk).

Tasks:

1. Login
2. Look at the Dashboard and get to add post from toolbar
3. Add a (standard) blog post with title and text
4. Preview your blog
5. Add an image blog post, with image from a URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org
6. Add a video post, with YouTube video URL provided
7. Add a link blog post
8. Add a quote blog post
9. Add a gallery post
10. Preview your blog again to see all the posts

Test 7: http://wpusertesting.com/videos/DC7-7.mp4

1. Fine
2. Fine
3. Fine
4. Fine
5. She uses “Add Media” to add her image – didn’t really see the post formats options
6. Since it worked once, she used “Add Media” again. Unfortunately the media modal still doesn’t embed videos from URL’s. This lead to a very confusing user experience.
7. She still doesn’t see the post formats bar. She is actively looking on the page for something, but doesn’t see the post format icons and opts to add the link via the editor. In the end, the only way she can figure out how to add a link is through the media modals “Add from URL” option.
8. She uses the editor to add the quote. She’s a little unsure how it works… But she figured it out via the editor.
9. She adds the 3 images via “Add Media”, but didn’t actually add a gallery (though she thought she had). She just selected multiple images and inserted them.
10. Fine

Observations:

  • She didn’t use the post formats selector once. She didn’t even appear to see it.
  • Apart from the video post, she was able to perform all of the tasks successfully with just the media modal and the editor.
  • We really need to make sure that the “Insert from URL” feature inside the media modal embeds video URLS. We’ve seen users attempt to add videos this way in every single round of testing, and they are all very confused when a link is published, instead of the embedded video.
  • The user uses selects multiple images and inserts them thinking she’s added a gallery. I wonder how many users do this very same thing…

Test 8: http://wpusertesting.com/videos/DC7-8.mp4

1. Fine
2. Fine
3. Fine
4. Fine
5. She uses “Add Media” to add the image. Doesn’t see the post formats bar.
6. She also attempts to add the video from the “Insert from URL” link inside of the media modal. It only adds a link. 6:20, she discovers the post formats bar. She selects the video format, and pastes the video URL into the title, and then the “Video embed code or URL” box. “Maybe I better not mess with it”, she says, unsure of if she should save her changes.
7. She uses the link format, but ends up using the editor because there was no way to edit the link text via the link post format option.
8. She goes back to using the editor to add the quote. Struggles a bit to know if it’s doing what she wants. After moving on to the next task, she discovers the quote post format, and tries it out. After she publishes it, and click the “View post” link, she gets a 404 error, and the quote is never really published.
9. She uses the gallery post format option. Unfortunately that doesn’t take her to the gallery section within the media modal. She ends up just multi-selecting and inserting multiple images (again, thinking she added a gallery).
10. 15:20 She takes a closer look at the post formats bar.

Observations:

  • She didn’t see the post formats bar until half way through her test. After she noticed it, she thought it was handy, and mentioned that for the quote format, she preferred to use it.
  • She also attempts to embed a video via the “Insert from URL” option in the media modal, which only adds a link. I’m guessing this happens a lot.
  • There is no “link text” field in the link post format, so even though initially she selected the link post format, she opted to add the link via the editor.
  • She got a 404 error when she tried to publish a quote through the quote post format.
  • When on the gallery post format option, can we link directly to the “gallery” section from the “Add media” button?

Thoughts?