Beta Testing / Summative Evaluations
BETA TEST / SUMMATIVE EVALUATION: Conducted in class on December 2nd.
Timely attendance and active participation for Beta Testing is mandatory; these, along with submission to the instructor of a hard copy of your questionaire, are valued at 5% of the course grade. The summative questionaire and instructions will differ from the formative in that during this phase of testing you will have no interaction with your reviewers. Further, there will be no follow-on modifications; this is the summative review. Lastly, the responses to these questions will be used to tabulate final data regarding all aspects of your site; therefore, the questions will be predominantly closed ended questions such as rating or Likert scale questions. There should be at least 40 questions in conjunction with the assigned activities for your user.
You should bring three copies of the questionaire and three copies of the instructions including the url, how to progress through your site, which paths to follow in order to answer the questions, what pages to view, etc. Two of these copies go to your reviewers and one set to the instructor, at the start of class.
For the beta test, two assigned classmates will review your project in accordance with a testing document that you have created. Each of them will go through your site without your guidance, following your instructions and answering whatever questions you have provided. In creating your testing procedures and questions, you will refer directly to the usability plan that you previously created.
You must also find additional reviewers outside of the class time to conduct this test and reply to your questionaire. It is strongly suggested that you do your outside of class reviews first, as there will be limited time available afterwards. The completed questionaires from both in class and outside of class are to be submitted with your final usability report.
The results of these tests will be referenced and analyzed specifically in your final usability report.