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This study seeks to apply additional techniques and conditions to traditional usability testing, as well as minimizing the experimenter's involvement in the procedure. The idea is to use the following techniques to evaluate an arbitrary website:

• Dual-participant design
  We intend to recruit two participants (users) per session. They will be asked to navigate a website cooperatively in search of particular information. We will encourage them to discuss their choices of path.


• Participant video
  In order to use the conversation information gleaned from having two participants, we will record audio and video of the participants, paying particular attention to discussions and gesture behavior.


• Click trace collection
  The order of data entry on particular fields can be as informative as the data itself, so we plan to collect traces of each click within the survey interface.


• Screen-capture videos
  To add detail to the data from trace collection, we plan to look at mouse movements and what page portions were displayed at any given time during the evaluation.


• Dual-monitor exploration
  The test materials will be presented on one screen of a dual-monitor computer, while the website to be evaluated will be presented on the other.

Participants:

Susan Campbell, Ph.D. Student, Department of Psychology

Kent Norman, Faculty, Department of Psychology