Biased testing and micro-coaching

Fri Jul 7 20:07:50 EDT 2017

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-bounces at lists.runrev.com on behalf of use-livecode at 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 at 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 at 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         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
    > HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com
    > 
    > 
    > 
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