#16 Prototype testing strategies
What questions do you aim to answer through user testing? What testing strategies do you plan to leverage in alignment with the questions you aim to answer?
Overall testing strategy
For our escape room concept, we designed four rooms each target at different sub-topics of budgeting respectively. However, we only plan to make the prototype of the first room based on the time and energy we have. For the first room, we aim to teach students how to allocate their spending. Our general strategy of user testing is to tell a story based on the physical and digital prototypes we have, and afterward, we will gather some thoughts from the participants through the form of a semi-structured interview.
We will make the following artifacts for Thursday: a cardboard mini room, some printed receipts, a pay stub, a worksheet to track the receipt, some mockups of the puzzles, etc. We are still in the making process and there are more details to be figured out. Here are some examples of the receipts, the pay stub and the spreadsheet we made.
Questions to answer
#1 Overall experience: What do you think of the whole experience in general?
Although we probably won’t be able to have our participants participate in exactly the same activities we designed (due to technical difficulties), we will provide them with some physical references (the model of the room, the receipts, the visuals of the puzzle, etc.) to tell a story and ask them to envision themselves participating in these activities.
#2 Experience of the individual puzzles: What do you think of each puzzle? How about the transition?
After walking them through the whole experience, we will ask them to zoom in on a specific puzzle and ask them about their opinions on that. They are welcome to play with the physical model we have on the table. As they play around with the object, we will ask them to think aloud about whatever is in their mind. After they finish talking about one puzzle, we will move on to the next. Apart from the experience of the individual puzzles, we are also interested in how well the transition is. For example, we will ask how clear they are about the next step after they solve the current puzzle. If they are not very clear, we will ask them about how it can be improved?
#3 Learning: What do you think you learned through the activities?
Apart from the experience, we are also interested in how well they can learn the knowledge we intend to teach them through these activities. We will also ask them to point out specifically which part is helpful and which part is not and state the reasons for that.
