Usability Testing: The Results

Rico and Valou read yesterday’s post about my first usability testing session for Poker Copilot. They asked for my findings. Here’s what I jotted down while conducting the testing:

• When stuck, users scan the menus. So every feature should be accessible via the menu bar.
• Consistency is golden. A couple of drop-downs in Poker Copilot behave differently to other identical-looking drop-downs (they don’t trigger a chart refresh). This is confusing.
• If something is double-clickable, there should be some indication. For example, make it look like a hyperlink, or change the appearance on mouse over, or have a little indicator next to it. It is not immediately obvious that double-clicking on item in a Poker Copilot table will do something.
• The user’s mental model is not always the same as the developer’s mental model. In the case of Poker Copilot, the user may want to go from viewing a statistic to charting it, rather than the other way around.
• In general, copy what Apple does (or MS for Windows developers). They probably do a lot of usability testing in their design. They set the standard on what users expect.

All of this is based on a sample size of 2. So please do your own testing before accepting my findings.