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Miss Enger

 
 Aaron Bitz  Brandi Enzminger  Tyler Russell Aaron Steckler 

Àevin Wentz
Date
10 November 2010
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Unit 3, Part 4 ± Usability Test Report
We made a set of instructions that tell the user how to capture what is happening on the screen of
their computer, edit their capture, and upload that video to YouTube for sharing. Our group felt
that this was a very relevant topic to college-aged students because we are often asked to
demonstrate how we did something on a computer in order to provide a visual for someone to
follow. The target audience we used for our instruction set was the college-aged individual. We
felt that these people are technologically savvy but could add this skill to their digital repertoire.

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The objective of our communication was to enable someone to put together an instructional
video based on our instructions without any questions or difficulty and have a high level of
confidence in their ability. The objective of our test was to gain some insight to find out if our
draft of instructions was thorough enough for our target audience to create an instructional video
without our assistance. In addition, we wanted to enable the user to carry out these instructions in
less than 30 minutes.

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The draft of our instructions is very close to its final form. We have performed several revisions
over the past few weeks and on Monday we added screen shots of what the program looks like at
several steps. Our test readers can be best described as a typical college-aged person that has the
basic computer/technology knowledge. We wanted to make our instructions very easy to read so
that even people with the most basic of computer skills could successfully complete these steps
to create and edit a video, and upload it to YouTube.

Both of the user tests were performed in Tyler Russell¶s living room in his residence. The
environment was clean, comfortable and free of distractions. Both users also used Tyler¶s
personal laptop and internet connection which was run through a secured wireless network. This
scenario provided the user with the most security we could provide as well as protecting our test
from any possible technological glitches or setbacks. We felt this was an acceptable change to
our originally planned location and environment. The group designed the instructions to be run
from an NDSU computer-cluster computer or another computer that was running Windows XP
with Microsoft Expression Studio 3 installed. Some differences about the test environment that
must be noted are that the user was operating on a laptop that was running Windows 7 rather
than Windows XP. This affected the path to start the program in our first step and also the path to
find the created video in step thirteen. These were minor setbacks; our users were able to use
their existing computer knowledge to adjust the steps accordingly.
To perform the test, we asked our two testers to take 20-30 minutes to follow our instructions.
We gave them each a paper copy of our instructions to use while they performed the steps on the
computer. We were sure to physically distance ourselves from the testers while they were testing
our instructions so that they could not rely on us to get them through parts of the instructions
where they might be confused.

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Both testers were able to successfully complete the steps in our instructions without difficulty.
Our testers said that the instructions accompanied by the screen shots were adequate for
completing the task of creating and editing an instructional video, and uploading it to YouTube.
There was no point where either of our testers struggled and no step that they felt needed
clarification.

We were very pleased that both of our test subjects were able to complete their task without any
assistance or confusion. We feel that all of the time that we put into writing our instructions,
making customized screen shots, and testing the instructions ourselves really paid off. Our
instructions are now complete and we are confident that they would be helpful to any average
computer user who wants to make an instructional video and share in on a website, such as
YouTube.

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Through our test we learned how to effectively communicate steps of a process to a user through
the use of written instructions. Because our instructions were successful in helping the user
complete the task, we will not be making any revisions to our instructions. Furthermore, we all
feel that we have learned more about creating user-friendly and effective communication tools.