Selecting Tasks. It is up to you to decided what set of typical tasks should be given to the users. The assignment sheet has a section that indicates how you can go about this, and you are already familiar with task descriptions from Assignment 1. As well, the experimenter should try the system ahead of time, becoming as familiar with it as possible. The experimenter should come up with at least six other reasonable tasks to give to subjects, preferably more. A good task is one that is likely to be used by many end-users. Tasks should also be selected to investigate different (but still important or heavily used) parts of the system functionality.
To get you going, I've included a few sample tasks below. Notice that they are phrased as directions that will be given to the user.
Preparing equipment. MS Word is sufficiently common that you should have no trouble obtaining access to it. You can have people use Word from their own account, or you can have Word set up in your account. Do re-start Word for each new user so that usage is not influenced by the task run by the previous user. Since the aspect of MS Word that you are testing is that of placing images in a document you may want to start the study session with Word up and running and a document loaded.
A precautionary note: To minimize changes from varying conditions you may want to use copies of the same word file as your starting point. However, make sure they are clean copies. Don't just remove the images from the previous session since there seems to be some residue effect. Make the number copies you will need of your word file first.
Questionnaires. Administer the pre-test questionnaire.
Questions must at least probe for people's experience with the computer
they are using, with MS Word, with image placement, and with word processors
in general.
At the end of the test, administer the post-test questionnaires.
These should include questions that ask people how satisfied they are with
the system (e.g., "This was really simple to use and the results look great.
I will place images in all the papers I write from now on" (Strongly agree,
agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree).
Instructions. Administer the usability instructions to subjects, as indicated in the handout.
Initial conceptual model. Note: the reason you are doing this is to see what initial conceptual model people have of the system, based upon their prior experiences and their interpretation of the visuals on the screen. You are looking for places where the model is incorrect. Start doing this as they are about to place their first image.
Reason for choosing this task. This should be a simple and straight forward task. If a person is going to illustrate their paper they will need to able to place images where they wnat the images to be. This task is typical and frequent.
Task 2. Writing a caption. Now that you have successfully placed your image you want to write a caption for it. You would like the caption to read "Figure 1: This first image really makes my paper easier to understand". You would like the caption to be placed directly under the image, be centred and have an appropriate gap from the rest of the text so that it is clearly identifiable as a caption
Reason for choosing this task. This is also a typical and frequent task. Almost all illustrations in papers have captions.
Task 3. Placing a single image across two columns.
The paper you are writing is in two column format. Your image, second_image.bmp
has a lot of detail that you would like to be visible. Therefore you want
to place this image at the top of page three so that its width goes across
the full page. Make a figure caption under this image so that it also goes
across the full page. It should be centred and look like it belongs with
the image. The caption will read:
"Figure 2: The presentation of this image requires as
much space as possible on the page"
Reason for choosing this task. This maybe a less frequent task but it is still relatively common for a person to want to display their image at as close to full resolution as possible. This task will exercise that part of the system that supports placing large pictures in two column format. Two column format is becoming a very common publication format.
Task 4. A more complex task. You have four images that you would like to place on page five. Each image will have a caption. Though it is important to you that these images are on page five, their exact placement is not so crucial.
Reason for choosing this task. This is a relatively complex task that has slightly fuzzy requirements. It is just as common for the person to be little vague about their layout requirements as to be precise. This will explore whether the placement of several images will be handled in a reasonable manner.
Other tasks you could develop. The experimenter should explore the system. If the experimenter suspects certain problems, the experimenter can develop a task that exercises that part of the system.
The developing conceptual model. When complete, repeat the exercise the subject did at the beginning i.e., have them explain what each interface component does in each main screen. Has their conceptual model changed through their experiential learning? Is their model correct?
Below is a sample paper, a technical report from last
fall. You can use it in your study if you wish.
A sample two-column paper can be obtained as
a word document with no pictures
and as a PDF document with pictures
in place.
Images to go with this paper can be obtained here.
These images are all different sizes.
image1, image2,
image3,
image4,
image5,
image6,
image7,
image8,
image9,
image10,
image11,
image12,
image13,
image14,
and image15.
These are a couple of very small images if you want
to try line images. image16,
image17
