Gutenberg Core Editor User Testing

This is a guest post by Martin Lugton (@martinlugton), Johan Falk (@j-falk) and Lucijan Blagonic (@lucijanblagonic).

During WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. London contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/., we created a user testing script to test the features of the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ editor. The aim was to build a set of instructions so that people can easily carry out user testing, and quickly share the results.

We prepared 18 questions that cover the functionality of the prototype, and created a form for recording the results. This form populates a spreadsheet that gives an overview of each task and each test. This will allow us to identify which tasks are easy for users to complete, and which ones need some further design work.

We did one test run (with only a handful of questions) and one full run with a test subject (Thanks, @Jip). The whole interview is 24 minutes long and can be viewed here:

Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Tammie Lister (@karmatosed) suggested we add another text field where the user can write down comments. We also added conditional formatting to the results spreadsheet so that tasks which were rated with 3 or lower (out of 5) are marked red. If you want to use this form you can or create your own based on it.

How to do the tests:

  • Open the interview form and resize to 1/3 of the width of the screen
  • Open Editor Prototype and resize to 2/3 the width of the screen
  • Use a screen recording app or the Chrome 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 Screencastify to record the whole screen. The free version of Screencastify version caps at 10 minutes, but you can record multiple videos.

Video showing how to test up the test environment:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B17jK6_GMrE5bzVObHgyLThhb1E/view

How you can get involved in user testing the new editor:

  • Test the prototype yourself:
    • Follow the above instructions (“How to do the tests”)
    • Post a comment on this post with your test videos, and highlighting any key problem areas.
  • Find some users to test the prototype
    • Send them the above instructions, so that they can fill out the form themselves
    • Watch the video of their session. Make a note of anything interesting.

Post a comment on this post linking to your test videos, noting any key insights.