Have made it through the second round of user testing videos for post formats (thanks, @lessbloat). These were on coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. as-is, using Twenty Twelve as the theme. Should have switched to San Kloud to enable all formats, but it actually may not have made much of a difference for these. There’s a third round still to watch and annotate.

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 1: http://wpusertesting.com/videos/DC7-3.mp4

1. Fine
2. Fine
3. Takes a moment finding the Publish button, but otherwise fine.
4. Fine
5. Notices it says nothing about a title; adds one anyway. Uses Add Media -> Insert from URL.
6. Again goes to Add Media -> Insert from URL. Inserts the video, which gets linked. Doesn’t work for oEmbed to have it linked 🙁 Again adds a title herself
7. Again goes to Add Media -> Insert from URL, but says she doesn’t think she’s doing it right. Tries to click the link that’s inserted in the editor to check if it goes to the right place.
8. Corrects then to than 😀 Adds it as plain text in the editor.
9. Add Media -> Media Library (woo!) Selects the three images using multi-select and inserts them all into the post.
10. Checks the sesamestreet.org link, which works. Then she closes the tab, so it’s over before getting to see some things like video.

Overall observations:

• She never once noticed the post formats metaboxMetabox A post metabox is a draggable box shown on the post editing screen. Its purpose is to allow the user to select or enter information in addition to the main post content. This information should be related to the post in some way. or wondered why the instructions were telling her to write blog posts of various kinds.
• Not having a title bothered her a bit, perhaps because it looks so important/required.
• The media modal certainly seems usable/comfortable, as she kept returning to it and was really quite handy with it.

Test 2: http://wpusertesting.com/videos/DC7-4.mp4

1. A little copy paste mishap, but otherwise fine
2. Fine
3. Scrolls to look for the Publish button, then has to digest the whole Publish metabox to find the button. After publish, does not expect to stay on the edit screen, because she’s “done” / ready to move on.
4. Fine
5. Opens the URL and drags the images over to the other tab directly and drops into TinyMCE. Observes that more and more things on the computer support drag and drop, so it’s a familiar mechanism.
6. Looks immediately for embed code. Copies and pastes code into the Visual editor; observes that it doesn’t show her what it will look like. Says that she would preview the post, but the test doesn’t say to do so, so she doesn’t. Wonders if there’s another way to embed; finds the format metabox. Selects “Link” and updates. Notes that changing and updating doesn’t seem to make anything look different. Wonders what it’s for – maybe a layout, but doesn’t make a difference to her.
7. Remembers the format she discovered in the last task and selects it. Notes she wants selecting a format to come before adding information (not sure if flow or layout wise); because it’s under Publish she doesn’t notice it, and considers anything under there to be of use after publishing. Says she always previews/checks posts for formatting on her own blog 🙂 Wonder what she uses…
8. Selects format – “What is the difference here, exactly?” Is really expecting the editor area to change with selecting a format; wonders what the value even is.
9. Selects Image format, presumably because Gallery isn’t available in Twenty Twelve. Looks around and eventually finds “Add Media”. Figures out to use shift to do a multiselect. Inserts them all; wonders if she did something wrong but notices that it’s formatted/shows images in the editor. Now wonders if Add Media should have been used for embedding the video to get a nice formatted view.
10. Notices the “Link” flag on that post, but it doesn’t seem otherwise formatted. Considers lack of formatting in various posts to be a consequence of her mistakes.

Overall observations:

• Whenever a user thinks that it is their mistake that something didn’t make a difference or work right, we really need to look at how to fix that – to help them avoid the mistake in the first place and feel confident that they know what to do or can figure it out.
• This could have been one of us testing such a feature. Her observations are all very astute – there’s no value in selecting a format when editing, which was further enforced by the theme display; the location on the screen is counter-intuitive to workflow; oEmbed is buried/not discoverable (and not just by WP); creating galleries as opposed to batch insertion is not something naturally thought about; and “Add Media” quickly becomes a familiar place to do more than insert images or upload files.

#3-6, #post-formats