My First Usability Test

Education Networks of America manages the internet backbone for K-12 schools throughout Tennessee. I worked there as a technical writer and then an interface designer. We didn't have much of a design process, so I researched methods and proposed Constantine and Lockwood's Usage-Based Design, which depended on paper prototyping and usability testing.

 

The testing teams included both developers and designers. After participating in the usability tests, the developers were excited to learn what users really needed and to learn that before they started coding. It was my first time performing usability testing, and it was love at first observation.

 

Education Networks of America also sold network monitoring solutions to school systems. The following test script and test results report was for the first version of an internal administrative application that allowed our sales support staff to activate and manage software licenses for our customers.