Evaluate your app

Now that your app is deployed, it’s time to find out how users react to it. To obtain high quality feedback, it’s useful to perform a usability test. Let’s follow the guidelines in 5 steps to Usability Testing:

1. Choose goal-based tasks
2. Write scenarios
3. Find a location and participants
4. Practice and test! (No screen capture required)
5. Identify (and if possible, fix) the top 3 usability problems

Note that your usability test for each participant must start by obtaining their informed consent. See the reading for for a template consent form. You should create a Google Doc or some other document with this text, print out two copies, and have each participant read and sign it both copies at the beginning of the test session. You will keep one copy, and the participant will keep the other.

There are three approaches for enabling the user to test your app:

1. They test your app by downloading and installing it on their own mobile device. This is the best approach, as it creates the most realistic experience for participants. There is some extra time required during the test, since they will have to download and install it.
2. They test your app via your mobile device. This is still acceptable, but there are potential issues with realism (for example, they are an Android user, and you have an iPhone).
3. They test your app by interacting with the emulator on your laptop. This is the worst case scenario, and should be only used if you have failed to successfully deploy the app in the previous module. This approach is still better than not doing the usability test at all.

You should document the design of your usability test and its results in a report. There should be a link to this report from your project site. One way to do this is to create a file in your github.io repo called “evaluation.md”, write the report in markdown format, and then provide a link to report from your project site. But if you prefer, you can create your report as a PDF or a Google Doc and link to it. Please do not create a Word document, as some viewers may not have that application.

Your report should include the following:

• A description of the user goals that you decided to test.
• A description of the scenarios associated with the goals. Each scenario description should include both a description of the prompt you will give the user, as well as what would constitute a successful behavior on the part of the user.
• A description of important user “types”. For example, if your app is about pet health, then important user types might include “pet owner” and “veterinarian”.
• A description of how participants were recruited.
• A copy of the consent form you used, verification that you obtained consent from all participants, and a notice that a hard copy of the signed consent form for each participant has been collected by the project team.
• An anonymized description of the participants. This includes their “type” and perhaps other relevant information. For example, if your app is about pet health, you might want to know if the user is an experienced pet owner or a novice pet owner. You might want to know if the user’s pet currently has health problems or not. You can identify each participant with a letter such as “A”, “B”, “C”, etc. You should have at least 5 participants.
• A description of when and where the usability test took place.
• The script that was used during the usability test.
• The “raw data” collected during the test. Record what happened, for each participant, for each scenario. Indicate if they used their own device, your device, or an emulator.
• The “results” of the test. This includes the top three (or so) usability problems that were discovered by the test. Please create issues in your project board to document the tasks required to address these usability problems, and provide links to each issue created as a result of this test in your report. Karma points if you are able to fix and close any of these issues prior to final project submission!

Submission Instructions

By the time and date on the schedule page, each person should provide a link to their project’s usability report in Laulima.