So, first off, thank you for agreeing to help. I really appreciate it. Secondly, before we get into the actual testing, I have just a couple questions to ask you.
My usability test is over the website Wikipedia. I have found that I often look at an article on the site, and I see a related one and immediately click on it, and then click on a different one, and repeat this process multiple times until I go down a rabbit hole and get lost sometimes. It sometimes feels as though the choices that I have while visiting this site are limitless, and that can be a little overwhelming sometimes. This is what I believe is called a heuristic violation, in that the users can feel overwhelmed to the point of constraint by the amount of links in front of them, and they may not fully understand what they are clicking on. I also believe that it can be challenging to recognize relevant links within the page due to the amount of them, which can give the user a worse experience with the site.
The way I have determined to test this is by having you play the Wikipedia Game.
The Wikipedia Game is simple. You will start on one page, and using internal links inside of the webpage, you will have to click them to navigate to a different page, which is different to the first one. Allow me to share my screen and give you a brief example. Let’s say you were asked to start on the NHL webpage, and your goal was to get to Wayne Gretzky. It does not matter how you get there. If you scroll down to the Expansion Era in the History tab, you will see his name, but for the sake of example I will show you a longer way. If you scroll down far enough, you will see a link to an NHL records page for individuals, if you click on that and read a bit, you will then see Wayne Gretzky’s name under the NHL awards tab on the page. By clicking on his name, you will reach his page and finish the task. This is just a very brief example to show the goal of this task; the game will be more challenging than this.
There are three main rules to this game. Rule 1 is that you cannot do any searching on the navigation tab. Rule two is that you cannot use the back arrow key to go back a page, making you choose carefully, and Rule 3 is that you cannot use the find in page command to look for specific keywords. You must read through the links and look for the next page. By establishing these rules, I am trying to prove that the amount of links on a given page on Wikipedia can be overwhelming to the user.
I have a few different difficulty levels for this test. The first round will be the easiest, and each round will be harder than the last. The final round will be the most challenging. While you are going through these tests, please remember to speak out loud every thought you have. If you struggle with the task, please let me know. I don’t want to give you any answers, but I am looking for input so please feel free to give it.
Now, do you have any questions for me?
Very well, it is time for the first task then. (Begin giving the tasks for the Wikipedia game)