There was a good bit to learn, as this week was more of an expansion from what was covered last week.
For this type of test, it was really interesting to see another new way to have users test, my digital product or prototype. Instead of having to sit with one person I could have multiple people reviewing it all at once, using a digital app called Maze. The context I could have is, a link to the digital product, a series of tasks for the users, and then a quick end review by the end of it
Another form of test that was covered was eye tracking. The name is pretty self explanatory. In my opinion, it would be really interesting to get a look at what exactly the user sees, or what type of content would draw their attention. I feel like, it would be best used, in terms of rating the contents hierarchy, layout or even accessibility.
I found it really interesting how exactly eye tracking works, in terms of what the equipment looks like and registers when recording. Knowing the difference between peripheral vision and central vision, of course the tracker would pay close attention to our central vision as it’s what would be considered our fixation when looking at something.
Eye tracking would use two things to track what a user is looking at and mark them, Gazeplots and heat maps. Heat maps are really beneficial when covering a number of users, as the hotter an area is, the common spot most users look at. For gazeplots, this is beneficial when reviewing a small amount of users as, it tackers every step their eye moves to and stops, good in terms of reviewing the likes of hierarchy.
How Heatmaps and Eye Tracking Help to Optimize Sales | Sales Layer
Fig 1. A screenshot of gaze plot by T60 Eye-Tracking System
Today’s task in class, is a team based exercise, which consists of conducting our own usability test, on three chosen websites. The purpose of this is to help provide some experience on what it could be like to begin a usability test and or take one. The step by step for the test is;