Testing: Mobile Plan & Materials

100 points

Overview

Mobile usability presents special challenges to technical communicators due to shifting technological infrastructures, in other words phones change a lot and quickly.  In this assignment, you will take what you have learned from your Testing: Full Test & Report and Testing: Plan & Materials and to develop a Mobile Plan and  Materials.

Following the sample in Barnum’s book, prepare a test plan that contains each of the headings used in the sample. In the Test Procedure section, include a task table, as discussed in class. Pay particular attention to the evaluation measures you intend to use linking test usability goals, scenarios, tasks, and metrics. Materials should rely on the examples in Barnum’s Chapter 6, Tullis & Albert’s Chapter 3, and those we discuss in class, prepare each type of test material listed on pages 163-184. As you do so, keep constantly in mind the purpose and objectives for your test as you defined them in your test plan. The purpose of the materials is to help you elicit as much information as possible to achieve those objectives, while further ensuring that your results are valid and are not affected by too many extraneous variables.

Your assignment is to prepare a proposal that revised the existing work from your test plan and materials. Essentially, this is a deep revision based on mobile and social justice needs of the client.

Your deliverable should address:

  1. Changes you have made/revised between your original plans and the unique challenges to mobile usability. These changes should be highlighted as well as explained e.g. if you have changed increased the the about of non-critical errors on a task because mobile devices are less Efficient in mobile, say so.
  2. How mobile usability challenges are manifested in persona development, usability test materials, usability scenarios and tasks, recommendations again with highlighting rationales and changes for mobile environment.

The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate the necessity for careful planning of a usability test, and for you to gain experience in producing a formal test plan as well as to emphasize the necessity for creating all test materials in advance of administering a usability test, so as to ensure that the materials will help yield the required results. The plan will explain the purpose of your test, the users you intend to test, the methods you will use, the evaluation measures you will use, and the planned test report contents. Materials should include a careful preparation of test materials that makes administering the test, analyzing the data, and reporting on the results considerably easier.

The materials should be as detailed as possible. For example, you should write down the specific questions and wording you intend to use in pre- and post-test interviews, rather than simply describing the types of questions you will ask. Using this level of specificity helps crystallize your thinking about which questions will help you achieve your goals.

The plan should be no more than 12 pages, depending on what you are testing and on how well you incorporate lists and tables into the plan. Materials should probably be about should be no more than 10 pages or longer depending on formatting. Materials will be the Appendix of your Testing: Mobile Test & Report. Remember that the plan may serve multiple rhetorical purposes: as a planning device for you, as information to other development teams, and as a document with social and political implications within your organization.

Our partner will be Roanoke Chowan Community Health Center
Your usability test should be directed at https://rcchc.org/.
Some of the tasks and populations that use the website include:
  • onboarding to website
  • onboarding to projects within the website.
  • information seeking behaviors
  • community/client outreach
The more ambiguous uses of the site include:
  • to recruit inclusive or potentially underrepresented users including multiple language options and a variety of devices.
  • to lower cognitive burden for participation
  • to improve information architecture for install base

Deliverables

  • Revised Usability Test Plan focused on Mobile (make sure to revise these materials)
  • Revised Mobile Usability Test Materials (make sure to revise these materials)
  • Revised mobile centric personas

Submission

  • All drafts and work should be submitted via moodle as G Suite documents

Rubric and Examples if available