Date: 13th March 2010
Time: 15:30 – 17:30 GMT
Product Tested: Converber
Mission:
You are moving from lovely Europe with the measurements based on the metrics system to the US with the imperial units. Test Converber v2.2.1 (http://www.xyntec.com/converber.htm) for usability in all the situations you may face. Report back test scenarios for usability testing until 4.30pm GMT on bug repository.
Testers: Jeroen Rosink, Ajay Balamurugadas, Anna Baik, Markus Gärtner, Vijay, Gunjan Sethi , Shruti
Anna Baik and Markus Gärtner facilitated the discussion. Each tester was asked about their experiences.
Shruti started the discussion afterwards. She and Ajay had paired for this session. They discovered that they had fallen into a trap – it took quite some time to figure out the different units in imperial and metric, and spent some more time thinking about which unit was in which system, and time googling for differences between the two – and then realised when noticing the time, that they had fallen into a trap, and needed to learn when to stop googling and start working on creating user scenarios.
Gunjan Sethi then gave her report. As in India the UK system is still followed, she was able to use personal experience of the kind of questions she had when first visiting the US, finding data that she could remember she had needed. Kms – miles. Gallons – litres and currency conversion. Gunjan found the amount of information and number of metrics in the tool overwhelming – it would have been better if it had defaulted to categories rather than a list of all the metrics. She found the tool quite complete but giving more info than necessary, for instance when converting currencies, exponential results and precision of 10 digits after decimal were given, which prompted the comment that the tool did not seem to have been created with usability in mind, but just the mathematical conversions.
Jeroen Rosink finished with his report. He had asked himself: think how and if I would use this application when seeing it the first time. He tried to build up a model for how he would see it, choosing to be a first time user looking for a tool which might help him abroad. This led him to check various questions: is the documentation helpful and readable, is the menu clear and understandable, will the application fit the screen, does it deal with international settings, can you be lost in this tool, will it give value for me. He also took a deliberate decision not to check the accuracy of conversions. He found that it helped him to shape a model of the application first, as he felt that usability will be different for different users – a tourist needing the tool on the streets will have different requirements to a tester abroad.
We then discussed the perennial questions about fulfilling the mission, whether it’s more important to stick to the original mission and deliver as asked, or look at delivering value – which is the trap? A big discussion for this session, and we decided to continue this line of thought on the forums/blogs.
Edited to add: the session transcript is now available.
Pradeep Soundararajan is a well known tester in the Testing World. Pradeep is a Test Consultant, Coach, Speaker and Mentor to many testers across the world. He is also the Author of 
