Usability Studies 101: Design by Groups, Site Navigation

[mandy]

...how to lean on your friends and family to create a highly useful navigation aid for your site.

The task you'll be assigning your test group is a simple one and involves two key features:

One: They must navigate your site -- all of your site. They can take as much time (within reason) to do it as they wish, but they must navigate every page of your site.

Two: They must write a short, declarative sentence that explains the purpose of the page. For example, a page describing your offerings could be summed up as "what we do."

Now that your friends have done their part, it's time for you to do the first piece of your part.

Take all their sentences ...and recast them as questions. The "what we do" declarative becomes the "what do we do?" interrogative. "What we offer" becomes "what do we offer?" et cetera.

full article: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/7721.asp

[Bidera]

According to Jacob Nielsen guy (real expert with over 20 years of studies) at useit.com, you only need 5 testers/read friends to find the bulk of problems. 15 people is max for any study, getting more would be counterproductive.


He also advocates something called paper prototypes for your sites. Unfortunately that part of site is pay (expensive too) so I couldn't explore what exactly that entails.