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This week I will be reflecting on Reflective Blog #3 to complete now a trinity from this point onwards, our blog in which we presented the usability test.
The deliverable itself was easy later on; however, getting started on it took some time as I had never personally conducted a formal usability test before. Rather, I had my peers in the past simply report any issues and this would leave some things up in the air as sometimes they wouldn’t even tell me any issues they had, as they had no idea they were issues in the first place.
In the test itself, a moment like this actually almost occurred and could only be stopped thanks to my reassurance. As instead of the blue screen with a series of options being presented on the 2nd machine that was tested, which was the user’s own personal Windows 10 Laptop, they instead were prompted with the Windows 10 enabled old Safe Mode feature. This feature was a black screen as opposed to the blue screen and provided fewer options. The user struggled for some time with this issue and while I didn’t interfere with the test, once it was completed, they personally thought they had done something wrong or this was “normal”. The fact was, it was not, and I had to inform them that this was a failure on my part, having written the test and guide itself.
In that moment, I truly saw the value of usability tests and intend to use them often now to ensure the best quality results for whatever I may be working on or need to be tested in the future.
Stepping back, more so on how creating the test at first was difficult. The way in which I counteracted having never created a proper test before was by looking up several examples online and picking from the best aspects I felt of multiple. This allowed me to get a series of good questions down that I felt were useful and actually did come into play for future iterations of the guide.
Completing this trinity of assignments taught me the value of using precise, technical and concise language, even if it may feel tedious to put together. As it makes it so that nearly anyone can do the task you wish to assist someone with. Which is why I specifically picked someone in my own personal family who did not have high technical expertise and certainly did not know how to access safe mode.
Truth be told, before even starting Reflective Blog #2, I actually approached the person I had in mind about what they would want to possibly learn and made the guide for them based upon that knowledge. Meaning that my guide and usability test up until this point were all tailored to assist someone in my personal life and actually did result in them learning a new thing about tech in general. To me, this is proof of the value of the technical writing field as a whole and what our purpose is career-wise.
The only thing I truly would have done differently is added fewer options, as I discussed in the previous blog. Ultimately, the user really did only need 1 option, which was the simplest one. I stand by should this have been out of the college setting; however and for a proper business, it would have been for the best that I wrote it the way I did for use by a larger audience, which may have different needs as we have been learning about in our textbooks by using personas.
AI Statement: Grammarly was used to spellcheck the writing of this assignment.