Biased testing and micro-coaching

Fri Jul 7 18:44:01 EDT 2017

Thanks Bill

I am thinking of reaching out to Trip Advisor after version 1.5, but focusing on high schools initially.

Trolls are a big concern. I have a lot ideas on dealing with that, including taking advantage of the self-correcting nature of social media. I am going to add in a rating system for reports and enable users to exclude poorly rated reports from appearing on their maps. I also want to have a class of users called documentarians, and enable users to see only reports from them. Documentarians will earn half the sponsorship income from their reports, so that will hopefully lead to a bunch of high- quality postings. I also have some ideas for a report review system.

All of that will be a start. If the trolling gets too be too much, I could resort to requiring that postings be reviewed before being being posted to certain categories.

I have some ideas on how to use trolls as an asset, but that is not fully thought out yet.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 7, 2017, at 6:24 PM, William Prothero via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> Jonathon:
> There are two learning processes going on. One is for the person testing the software, the second is for you, learning what kinds of interface approaches hang up new users. As you learn, by observing users, you will gain approaches that minimize future user problems, and you will find that you will be able to code in a way that avoids them.
> 
> If it were me, I would start small with the evaluation, and do it first by informal observation, encouraging the user to think out loud as he/she uses the app. You will get a feel for obstacles pretty quickly. You may run out of test users quickly if you use many of them at once, so put as much common sense as you can into changes that you make between new testers. If this is unsuccessful, then you will have to expend more of your resources on testing.
> 
> Another good thing is to download and try other apps, checking to see how their UI is set up. For example, almost every web delivered login page is the same or similar. Why? Because they work. When numerous apps take a similar approach, learn from them.
> 
> Good luck. Please post what you learn from your testing.
> 
> Another piece of advice (worth what it costs you??). Your application is actually huge. Think Facebook and the other biggies. Maintaining it, should it be successful, will be HUGE! Think trollers, spammers, whackos, etc, etc. I had a site where I allowed anybody to create an account (but I had to approve the account to activate it), and got loads of trial logins from spammers and bots. Finally, I just disabled new accounts. I wonder if you might want to consider narrowing the scope of your app, perhaps to a specific education segment. Or, maybe a particular travel segment or for a specific tour company. This would let you get your app out there and identify early issues. A tour company might find a custom branded app that supports their tour company to be appealing.
> 
> Good luck,
> 
> Best,
> Bill P.
> 
> 
>> On Jul 7, 2017, at 3:01 PM, Jonathan Lynch via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>> 
>> It does help, Scott - sounds like I should segment the testing process with a cycle, running through the test, observe, discuss, note cycle for each group of functionalities. Not unlike PM methodology.
>> 
>> Because I am looking to perfect and grow a single app over many years, I should be able to reliably group the functional areas for testing.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Jul 7, 2017, at 5:56 PM, jonathandlynch at gmail.com wrote:
>>> 
>>> It sounds like a little bit of direct, intensive observation is worth a lot of testing a a distance.
>>> 
>>> Thanks Jeff
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> 
>>>> On Jul 7, 2017, at 5:31 PM, Jeff Reynolds via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Jonathan,
>>>> 
>>>> I second bill's approach of watching folks use the app. Years of educational software creation taught me this. I would always make friends with a local teacher that was into tech and they usually were happy to get a period to try something on the kids if it only took one period to do in the lab and was something they thought good first. Things were so self evident on what just worked and what crashed and burned. I really found that the designs that were forced (usually by marketing) always crashed and burned, but the just good ideas that came out of what was it we were really trying to do somehow avoided most all the little design eddies that folks would get a little hung up by. But watching you could quickly see those eddies w.o having to do hard core testing. Sadly this is hard to do for free in a school anymore but hiring some kids or adults will do.
>>>> 
>>>> It's funny as I've found the same thing with exhibit design. I would always spend a few hours just watching folks after we finished an exhibit. I found it really invaluable to find the little issues and the big ones and you could see so easily what folks were getting and what they were not, what they were looking and and not looking at and how they felt about the exhibit in the whole. Many of these exhibits got very expensive summative evaluations and I found that my just watching observations were right in line with heavy testing and many times a bit more complete and useful for potentially fixing things and learning for the future.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers
>>>> 
>>>> Jeff
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jul 7, 2017, at 1:53 PM, use-livecode-request at lists.runrev.com wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Jonathon,
>>>>> I feel your pain. In my case, I was initiated by my students and very quickly learned how to ask the questions a newbie would ask. I also paid small amounts to graduate students to get their feedback.
>>>>> 
>>>>> One of my very effective testers is my grandson, my wife, any of my colleagues who might be enticed to use the app. Looking over the shoulder while these folks use the app can be very illuminating. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> In summary:
>>>>> 1. Ask friends and relatives first.
>>>>> 2. Perhaps there would be volunteers from the live ode users group.
>>>>> 3. Hire high school students who might have a tech interest. Look over their shoulders as they use the app and dialog to themselves. Actually watching users is invaluable.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Good luck,
>>>>> Bill P
>>>> 
>>>> 
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