What Did You Learn?

As soon as the usability test is over, ask yourself the following questions:

• What worked well?

• Did the users consistently misunderstand anything? If so, what?

• Were there any mistakes consistently made? If so, what?

• Did they do the things that you had expected them to do? If not, what did they do?

• Did they do things in the order in which you had expected? If not, what order did they do them in?

• What did they find interesting?

• What did you expect them to find interesting that they did not find interesting?

• Did they know what the site is for? Did they miss any big ideas?

• How many of the tasks were they able to do? Which ones did they have the most trouble with?

• When did they look frustrated? What were they doing?

• Did the site meet their expectations? If not, where did it fail them?

• Do you know what their expectations were?

• Were they ever confused? What were they doing when they were confused?

At this point, you should have some ideas of where your product has problems. You've probably seen several things come up again and again. Maybe people don't understand the name you've given to a certain function. Maybe they don't see a critical piece. Maybe they aren't interested in what's being offered. Maybe they love it and it fulfills everything they want. All these things are good to know since they tell you where you are having problems and, equally important, where you're not.