lessbloat 6:01 pm on June 26, 2012
Tags: ,   

Round 3 of this Discovery Cycle is…

Round 3 of this “Discovery Cycle” is ready to preview. Check out round one & round two, if you’ve not already.

Here’s the video for this round.

Step One – Log in

Notes (time to complete: 0:20)

  • No problems logging in

Step two – Explain what you see

Notes (time to complete: 2:33)

  • 0:30 – Starts step
  • 2:25 – “I guess I would just go through each of these setting links”, he said pointing to the first column of the welcome screen, “and then these customize links” he said pointing to the third column
  • 3:03 – “For me this is a little long winded” he said pointing to the intro paragraph on the welcome screen (i.e. If you need help getting…)

Step Three – Preview your blog

Notes (time to complete: 1:08)

  • 4:30 – Starts step
  • 4:48 – Goes to left nav – looks under “Appearance”
  • 4:55 – Moves over to the welcome screen links – reads through them for a link to preview his blog
  • 5:06 – Back to left nav – Hovers over “Posts”
  • 5:10 – Reads aloud – “Updates, no. Screen options, no.
  • 5:12 – Back to left nav – reads from bottom up, “Settings, Tools, Users, Plugins, Appearance”
  • 5:17 – Hovers over “Appearance” – “I would think it would be under appearance”
  • 5:20 – Scrolls down page – scrolls back up
  • 5:38 – Spots “My Blog” in dashboard and clicks “Visit Site” link – “Kind of hidden up there”

Observations

  • Again, we see that the toolbar links are missed completely, and have to be discovered after literally looking everywhere else (perhaps an unconscious ad blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.). How do we A) Provide an easy way for them to access their site, and B) find a way to introduce the idea of the toolbar to new users.

Step Four – Change your background color

Notes (time to complete: 2:45)

  • 6:05 – Starts step
  • 6:17 – Clicks back button
  • 6:21 – Clicks “Set a background color” link in third column of welcome screen
  • 6:28 – Clicks “select a color” link
  • 6:33 – Clicks a blue in outer color ring
  • 6:46 – “Okay, so I need to save” – Referring to marker in inner color box, “I’m not sure what this little on is in here”
  • 6:49 – Clicks “Save changes” button (he never selected a color in the inner box, so the background did not change)
  • 6:56 – Clicks “Visit your site” link at top of page in success notification box
  • 7:05 – “That looks the same, maybe I did something wrong” – clicks back button
  • 7:10 – Clicks “Select a color” link – “For some reason this did not change, it didn’t save it, why not?”
  • 7:18 – “So I’ll go over here again” – clicks blue in outer ring – clicks green in outer ring – clicks blue again
  • 7:26 – Clicks “Save changes” button again
  • 7:35 – Clicks “Save changes” again just to be sure
  • 7:37 – Clicks “Select a color” link
  • 7:44 – “So very frustrating – I don’t know what to do really, it seems like it should be easy and straightforward, but nothing’s happening”
  • 8:00 – “Maybe it’s under menus, maybe I’m on the wrong spot here” – clicks “Menu” link from left hand nav – “No.”
  • 8:06 – Clicks “Theme” link in left nav – “Maybe it’s the theme”
  • 8:18 – Clicks “Theme options” link under Twenty Eleven theme
  • 8:26 – “Oop, maybe it’s the back ground, maybe that’s it” – clicks back button and clicks “background” link under Twenty Eleven theme
  • 8:33 – Clicked “Select a Color” link
  • 8:35 – Clicked blue in outer color ring.
  • 8:38 – Clicks color in middle box – “Oh, okay, maybe you have to pick the one in the middle here”
  • 8:47 – Clicks “visit your site” in top notifications bar
  • 8:50 – “Okay, so it changed it. Looks good.”

Observations

  • 3 out of 3 users have had difficulty with selecting a background color (this one was just painful to watch).

Step Five – Change your site title

Notes (time to complete: 1:19)

  • 9:02 – Starts step
  • 9:03 – Clicks back button (to background settings page)
  • 9:07 – Looks at links in left nav under “Appearance”
  • 9:13 – Reviews all options in left nav
  • 9:18 – Clicks “Dashboard” link in left nav
  • 9:30 – Reads through welcome screen links – “Select your tagline and timezone, maybe” (so close…)
  • 9:40 – Back over to left nav
  • 9:43 – Clicks “home” link under “dashboard” in left nav
  • 9:50 – Scrolls down page – scrolls back up – “Nothings really jumping out here”
  • 9:55 – Clicks “Select your tagline and timezone” link in first column of welcome screen
  • 10:09 – Successfully changes title
  • 10:11 – Scrolls down and clicks “Save changes”
  • 10:21 – “General settings is not really where I’d think the title would be”

Observations

  • Again, 3 out of 3 people had issues finding where they change their site title.

Step Six – Add your first post

Notes (time to complete: 0:57)

  • 10:47 – Starts step
  • 10:56 – Clicks toolbar link back to dashboard
  • 11:00 – Clicks “Write your first post” link in second column of welcome screen
  • 11:10 – Adds title
  • 11:17 – Adds description
  • 11:28 – Clicks “Publish”
  • 11:34 – Clicks “View post”
  • 11:44 – “Looks good, pretty easy to do that”

Step Seven – Preview your new post

Notes (time to complete: N/A)

  • User did this in the last step

Step Eight – Publish an image

Notes (time to complete: 2:17)

  • 12:38 – Starts step
  • 12:49 – Right clicks and copies link to photo (http://bit.ly/w7xFeY)
  • 13:00 – Studies first two dropdowns in toolbar – doesn’t even see “+New” – Clicks “Dashboard” link in toolbar
  • 13:20 – Scrolls down – Clicks “Upload insert” link under “QuickPress”
  • 13:33 – Clicks “Select files” button
  • 13:44 – attempts to past image URl into file upload dialogue – “I’m not sure if this is going to work”
  • 14:00 – Goes back to upload modal, and gets “Sorry this file type is not permitted for security reasons” error.
  • 14:05 – Clicks “From URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org” tab – pastes in the URL
  • 14:31 – Adds an image capture “picture”
  • 14:38 – Clicks “insert into post” button
  • 14:44 – Clicks “publish” button
  • 14:48 – Clicks “View post” in success notification alert
  • 14:55 – “Okay, so there it is, so it worked.”

Observations

  • I’m not sure anyone has noticed the “+ new” dropdown in the toolbar yet. Anything we can do to help users spot this?
  • All 3 users clicked the “Select files” button on the upload screen. Should we add a link under that button that says, “or upload from a URL”. I know there is a “From URL” tab, but users don’t appear to be noticing it.

That’s it for round 3

Tomorrow, I’ll write up a summary post about all of the things we found across all three tests.

Thoughts?

#discovery-cycle-1, #user-testing