Usability Testing 9
Defining the Purpose of the Study
All of the usability testing methods described in this chapter require the
researcher to have a clearly delineated sense of what they intend to study.
Defining the study takes some time and thought, and it is different from
creating a hypothesis or predicting outcomes. The study definition should
consist of a positive purpose statement rather than one that is more negative
because if you take a negative direction, it can lead to a study design that
skews your results negatively.
Positive study purpose examples:
• This study will determine if users can easily find the full text of an article.
• This study will determine if users can locate local, historical, newspaper articles.
• This study will determine if users are more likely to click on limit links, if they are
on a bright blue or a muted gray background.
As you can see, the purpose statement can range from a vague and open state-
ment, or it can be quite specific.
Negative study purpose examples:
• This study will prove that users do not view nonunderlined text as links.
• This study will prove that known citation searches are difficult for patrons.
• This study will show that the discovery system link resolver software is hard to use.
These negative purpose statements may be based on real-life problems that
have been observed and reported by librarians, but they do not have to define
the study itself. If these negative statements accurately describe problems with
your system, these trouble areas will still be evident even if you design a study
with a positive purpose, such as these examples:
Revised negative study purpose examples:
• This study will review how well users are able to identify and use discovery system
links.
• This study will examine how patrons find results for a specific citation.
• This study will determine how patrons use the discovery system link resolver soft-
ware.
The benefit of using a positive study purpose will be that you will have not
biased the outcomes by focusing on the negative results in your data analysis.
The goal is to design an exploratory study that captures the real way that your
patrons use your system, instead of setting your participants up for failure.
