THX38 0.7.1 User Testing

I put THX38 0.7.1 through some testing. Here are some clips showing the main points of interest. Most are around a minute or so in length, some are shorter.

Accidentally clicks into the customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. and gets disoriented, first click on the “Customize” button doesn’t work (not sure why), thinks the magnifying glass hover icon indicates search:

While the themes page is blazingly fast 🙂 the customizer is slow:

Suggests the “Delete Theme” button should be red all the time:

Overlooks “Customize” button on the active theme:

“Delete Theme” is a little hard to find for this user:

Wishes clicking on the large screenshot in the modal would show a full view:

Wants more screenshot detail:

“Delete Theme” process not immediately visible, but found fairly easily:

Theme description details are a little too technical, i.e. “post format-packed,” HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites., SEO:

“Delete Theme” is easy:

Keeps clicking the back button instead of the “x” in the modal and it disorients her a little:

Tries right-clicking to delete:

If you’d like to see the full videos, you can download them here: THX38 001THX38 002THX38 003THX38 004THX38 005.

What would make finding really good themes easier? (survey question responses)

  • Tags or categories for subject matter, colors, or any number of style ideas and needs
  • Marketing maybe? Make it free?
  • If I were given an option of more than 20 themes to choose from, I would like to be able to choose by categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging., color theme, or complexity.
  • I can’t think of anything to really beat browsing. I mean, you could categorize them and even list them according to common uses (like Church) but I think I’d have to keep looking to find the perfect one. If you categorized based on HTML5 and all that, I think you’d lose a chunk of your user base (although having more technical categories for advanced users isn’t a bad idea at all).
  • The ability to search by genre. e.g. if I was a hairdresser key in the term hairdresser and get back a range of themes that could work for that business model. Complete with a choice of images would be fantastic.

Key Observations

  • The magnifying glass/search icon was only mentioned by one user. The visibility icon could still be a good alternate because an eye symbol is often used for “view” online.
  • Themes load very fast! This makes it especially noticeable when the customizer loads slowly.
  • Viewing most themes on a brand new WordPress install is lackluster because there isn’t much data to customize per se.
  • Users had no trouble finding “Preview,” “Activate,” and “Delete Theme” in the modal when hover buttons were removed. Consider taking the hover buttons out. I know this adds one click to activating a theme (pushback if you feel strongly about it).
  • Noteworthy user suggestion:  make the “Delete Theme” button red all the time
  • Noteworthy user suggestion:  make it so you can click the screenshots in the modal to enlarge them (carousel style?) or make them zoomable

All in all, the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party is in really good shape. It’s fast! The “delete theme” link doesn’t get triggered accidentally but is still relatively easy to find. All of the bugs found via user testing were fixed in plugin version 0.8. If I could vote for two updates for v1, I would recommend: remove preview and activate hover buttons, change hover icon to a “view” symbol.

#thx38, #user-testing