This morning I tested the Color picker in…

This morning I tested the Color picker in betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1 against iris-picker-13.diff.

First user

Here’s the video.

Notes

  • In her very first use of the color picker, she thought she had changed the color to light blue, but she had only changed the hue. She had to go back after playing with the other color picker and fix it.
  • Once she got the hang of it, she found both color pickers fairly easy to use.
  • Overall she prefers the color picker on the left (the one currently in beta 1).

Second user

Here’s the video.

Notes

  • In her very first use of the color picker, she had some difficulty discovering the need to click both the left box and the right hue slider.
  • The lack of handle on the left side hue slider seemed to pose a bit of difficulty for this user, whereas, she moved the right side (HSV) hue slider with ease.
  • After figuring out how to use the color pickers, she didn’t have much trouble.
  • Had a bit more trouble selecting “White” on the HSV color picker
  • Overall she prefers the color picker on the right (the HSV one).

Third user

Here’s the video.

Notes

  • In her very first use of the color picker, she used the right one first (HSV), and seemed to like it more than the one on the left (the one currently in beta 1)
  • Mentions the one on the right is similar to one she’s used before (in windows)
  • 6:20 – “Why is this whole thing black?” she says looking at the right HUE slider bar.
  • Overall she seemed to like the right color picker better, except for the last task which was hard for her to select since the orange range of colors is small (squished between red and yellow), with not much room for selection.

Try them out with your friends/family

I’d love to get more insight into which color picker works best. If you’ve got a spare couple of minutes, please feel free to try these out on friends, family members, or co-workers, and post your observations in the comments (specifically which color picker worked best for them, and any thoughts on tasks where they got stuck):

http://wpusertesting.com/iris-a/ (light gray to light blue)
http://wpusertesting.com/iris-b/ (green to black)
http://wpusertesting.com/iris-c/ (blue to white)
http://wpusertesting.com/iris-d/ (black to dark orange)