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Usability testing: Asking the right questions

February 12, 2014 by Laura Miller — Director of Marketing, Kioware

You don't know what you don't know.

In a previous post, we discuss the value and need for testing the usability of your kiosks. If you are conducting usability testing via either observation of users or artificially staged research, you are ahead of the game. That being said, if you aren't viewing the appropriate users in action you are missing some extremely important information.

Users tends to have significant variation in technical abilities, knowledge, and experience. If you aren't viewing a broad range of technical backgrounds, you are likely lacking some key observations.

For example, if the kiosk will be used in a retail space, who are the prospective users? What is the demographic make-up of the store visitor? Is the person using the kiosk typical of that visitor or is their demographic/psychographic profile different? Is the kiosk meant to enable parents to purchase gift cards, for example? These factors must be considered in both the design of the kiosk or kiosk application as well as the testing being conducted of the kiosk's usability. You can ask similar questions in any vertical and with any kiosk usage intention.

When constructing your usability tests, you'll also want to consider how you phrase your questions, making them as unbiased and non-technical as possible. One less-suitable question might ask your user to "open the browser and go to X website". You might think that most users would know what we mean by "open the browser." Not true. View the answers received in a Google Street Intercept about "what is a browser" (not scientific) from 2009 — yes, it's dated, but the lack of knowledge even then is a bit surprising.

In short, consider your audience in both kiosk design and usability research. Do not assume any level of knowledge — be sure your questions are as clear as possible, and that your usability testing actually provides you with the knowledge needed to make sure your kiosk is useful for the bulk of your projected target audience.