I would echo Jacqueline's advice here:
" There's no secret to creating a great application that people will use and
enjoy. Test the application and everything in it, again and again. Run
everything through its paces several times and in different orders. Click every
button, read and scroll every field, run every script. Show every dialog—and
when you do, try every possible response button. Then get all your friends to
do the same thing too.
That's it. Everything else I'm about to tell you is just commentary."
I myself will run through the app, over and over and OVER again… as Mark says,
you will end up in the developer minds set and miss the UX stuff; so you need
to step away mentally and do a "reset" on your head space.. then come back and
run through it all again. I probably spend 50 % of my time working on content.
30% on code and a full 20% just "thinking about it, how it works, from a user
point of view." And you do this away from your computer!
Like today little girl told me "I love doing the word puzzles, but when I first
came to that screen it was a bit confusing how it was supposed to work. Not
everyone will think to click on the "I" icon [supposed to be for "info/help")
Maybe you could show instructions the first time?" and "it would be great if
you could save the puzzle in a semi-finished state, so I can come back and
finish it." This "little girl" in a 10 year-odl body with a 19year old brain
that actually has the patience to take a 300 character quote and put the words
in order, even if it takes her 20 minutes! Even I won'd do that… but she will,
but she might have to run off to school and stop half way through….
Another more mature response to the first beta: "It's all very lovely, but I'm
not clued in to what, where we are going …."
In V2 or V3 I'm planning to have a little more curated entry to the app…
There's got to be more of "a story here"
so you will never get this UX feedback on your own.
I have about 40 beta testers.. even they are, frankly terrible about give us
feedback. … if you are non-profit or on shoe string budgets, you can't pay
for testing, and volunteers are often super busy people. So you have to be very
pro-active in engaging feedback. I'm a bit "in your face" with guests here
when I spot someone in my "target market" (young 15-40 educated, Hindu
background modern mind set) I've come to know who will be engaged and who will
not.
But this type of users (Free beta testers) are not UX experts either… so you
get either silence or "it works great lovely very handy and responsive on my
iPhone" or "it's slow" [android] without telling me exactly what is slow and
when. I have deliberately hold mini "focus meetings" here with some of them and
drag out from them what is "wrong" with the app, because not being up on UX,
these users don't know how to articulate their experience very well.
I'm constantly collecting possible beta testers. Apple devices on the developer
account are running up close to 45 for this year , with about as many turned
off from last year… and we have at least another 30 android uses… but, maybe
only 3-5 of these will actually communicate with me. Once I actually find
someone who is interested enough and articulate enough and has the time to stop
and talk about it, e.g.
"I really don't like that timer giving a count down sound. It ruins the
experience. Just let me decide how long, then let it run and at the end you can
"ding""
OK Aha! then I "got one!" … i.e. someone you can spend on to help with the UX
and milk that dialog about the UX as much as a I can.
I have two meetings on the latest beta this afternoon: one with a professional
health care lady and her daughter who both test the app and another with a
19year old brilliant university studen, who flew to Kauai just to go on a
"study retreat" for some crazy advance bio-genetic engineering exams.. who is
very open and articulate about what they think about how it should work. And I
have on my schedule to talk to 4 different beta testers remotely
This doesn't happen by itself, you have to be super pro active. Once yet get a
team of volunteer testers who are engaged, even just 4-5, who communicate well
with you, you are good to go. But you might have to work through 100 different
individuals before you find those 5.
That's my experience so far here…
On 7/7/17, 7:53 AM, "use-livecode on behalf of Jonathan Lynch via use-livecode"
<use-livecode-boun...@lists.runrev.com on behalf of
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
Thank you, Jacqueline
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jul 7, 2017, at 1:39 PM, J. Landman Gay via use-livecode
<use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
> http://hyperactivesw.com/resources_testing.html
>
>
>> On July 7, 2017 6:59:52 AM Jonathan Lynch via use-livecode
<use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>
>> What steps do you guys follow for accurate testing when you don't have a
budget for proper official testing procedures?
>
> --
> Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com
> HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
>
>
>
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