What should you pay attention to when designing a task? How to evaluate the quality of task design?

Article Description: the task design approach in usability testing.

Usability is an important indicator of product quality, from the user's point of view to determine the product's effectiveness, learning, memory, use efficiency, fault tolerance and satisfactory degree. Usability testing is a method of continuously optimizing the product design based on user feedback and constantly obtaining user feedback in iterative design. The goal is to establish evaluation criteria, identify as many usability issues as possible, and guide the design and improvement of the product interface to maximize the availability of the product.
If you want to learn more about the planning, execution, and analysis of usability testing, the simple quick usability test article will give you some insight and inspiration. In this paper, we only discuss the design of the test task, which is an important part of usability test work.

Why to talk about the design of the test task alone, because the quality of the test plan directly affects the test results and work efficiency, and task design is the most important test plan, but also the most test with the experience of the staff.

Children who have participated in usability testing know that in the test, the host will often give users a series of tasks, through the user's operation to discover the problems in the product.

Why do you need task design?

The test task is to give users the incentive to use the product in a lab environment, with the aim of showing them how to operate with reasonable motivation.

How does a task design work?

In general, the practice of using the researcher with less experience is to write the task on the basis of the function of the product, the common way is "please xxxx". There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it's easy to get caught up in the mistake of designing a task for the user to use a feature. In fact, more important than the function itself is the user's use of the target . Therefore, in the design task, must constantly torture themselves:"I designed the test task is really reflect the user's actual goal?" " especially in the face of unfamiliar products.

For example, in NetEase mobile phone mailbox Intelligent version of the test, I have encountered some obstacles. Because I am not the target user of the mobile mailbox, I often use the computer in the office environment to log into the mailbox, there is little demand for the mobile mailbox, so it is difficult to imagine what the user is motivated to use this product. There are a few questions in my mind:

• What kind of person is likely to use this product?
• Which features are most likely to be their common features?
• How will they use these features?
• What is the relationship between function and function for them?

In order to clarify the clue, I asked the mail department a long-term responsibility for mobile phone products colleagues, from her feedback that the demand for mobile phone users, they have more outdoor activities in the working hours, frequent mail exchanges. A more prominent group is the foreign trade industry personnel, they often related to product quotes mail exchanges. As a result, the following tasks were designed:

For detailed steps on task design, see the article "Simple and quick usability testing."

What should you pay attention to when designing a task?

· Full coverage of the functional areas of concern

Before designing a task, make a list of tasks, as shown in the following diagram, and then, when the task is well designed, ensure that the task is covered by all the concerns.

· User operation comfortable and natural, consistent with normal

The order of tasks is as consistent as possible with typical user flow of operations . Or in the example above, the user's action flow in the mailbox is generally "login-view inbox-read unread mail-processing some mail-(write mail-save mail-email)", try to avoid the user feel abrupt.

· Add some plots appropriately

As I said before, the test task is to give users in the laboratory environment to use the product motivation, in order to make the motivation described more reasonable, we often have to design the task "plot" some, to help users better integrate into the product use.

How to evaluate the quality of task design?

After the task is designed, it must undergo 1-2 test tests. This is the same as making a product. we are not necessarily target users , so the quality of the task design needs to be tested by the target user . In the test, if the user saw the task design, said to you, "This situation I usually encounter!" "You're a success!" said the thief.

In a word summarize the main points of task design: Focus on the user's actual use goals.

The above is my work in the process of a little experience, I hope that we try, a lot of practice, but also welcome a lot of shooting bricks! ~