Findings
User #1
0:04-3:30-- The moderator welcomed the participant and explains the study. 3:30-6:17-- The moderator went through the pretest questionnaire and the participant answered every single question. 8:17-- The study began. 8:33-- The moderator assigned task #1- Create an account or login into a YouTube account. 8:33-9:00-- The participant had already logged into her account, thus successfully completing the first task. 9:00-- The moderator assigned task #2-Look up a video and from 9:05-10:05, the participant successfully completed the task. 10:07-The moderator assigned task #3-Turn on the subtitles of the video which the participant successfully completed. 10:15-The moderator assigned task #4- Make the screen of the video bigger or access full screen mode which the user successfully completed. 10:31- The moderator assigned task #5- Access the setting of the video and mess around with the speed of the video which the user successfully completed. 11:08- The moderator assigned task #6-Interact with the comment section of the video which the user successfully completed. 13:11--The moderator assigned task #7- Access the creator channel and find its most popular videos which the participant did not quite complete. Instead of clicking on the option "popular", the user scrolled down through the videos of the creator and found the video with the most views and likes, taking place on the 13:45-14:21 mark. 14:32--The moderator assigned task #8- Mark or save it to watch later one of the videos of the creator which the participant successfully completed. 15:48-- The moderator assigned task #9- Upload a video to YouTube which the user successfully completed. 19:10-- The moderator assigned task #10- Access the analytics of the user's content which the participant successfully completed. 19:26-- The moderator assigned task #11- Share the user's video on social media which the user did not quite complete since she did not remember the password to her social media accounts. She shared her video through email on the 22:47-24:03 mark. 22:16-- The moderator assigned task #12- Delete the user's video and get back to YouTube's homepage which the user had trouble completing. She was able to delete her video but was not able to get back to the homepage while she was inside of YouTube studio. At the 26:01 mark, the participant opened a new tab to access YouTube's homepage. 26:29-- The moderator concludes the study and gets the participant's final thoughts which takes place from 26:30-27:48.
User #2
0:04-3:26-- The moderator welcomed the participant and explains the study. 3:26-4:46-- The moderator went through the pretest questionnaire and the participant answered every single question. 7:25-- The study began. 8:50-- The moderator assigned task #1- Create an account or login into a YouTube account. 8:50-9:00-- The participant had already logged into her account, thus successfully completing the first task. 9:07-- The moderator assigned task #2-Look up a video and from 9:15-9:40, the participant successfully completed the task. 10:25-- The moderator assigned task #3-Turn on the subtitles of the video which the participant successfully completed since she already had the subtitles of the video on. 10:44--The moderator assigned task #4- Make the screen of the video bigger or access full screen mode which the user successfully completed. 11:03- The moderator assigned task #5- Access the setting of the video and mess around with the speed of the video which the user successfully completed. 11:33-- The moderator assigned task #6-Interact with the comment section of the video which the user successfully completed. 13:30--The moderator assigned task #7- Access the creator channel and find its most popular videos which the participant did not quite complete. Instead of clicking on the option "popular", the user scrolled down through the videos of the creator and found the video with the most views and likes, taking place on the 13:45-14:21 mark. 15:12--The moderator assigned task #8- Mark or save it to watch later one of the videos of the creator which the participant successfully completed. 16:16-- The moderator assigned task #9- Upload a video to YouTube which the user successfully completed. 19:19-- The moderator assigned task #10- Access the analytics of the user's content which the participant did not know how to complete. She had to ask the moderator for help. 20:45-- The moderator assigned task #11- Share the user's video on social media which the user did not quite complete since she did not remember the password to her social media accounts. She shared her video through email on the 21:18-22:20 mark. 22:30-- The moderator assigned task #12- Delete the user's video and get back to YouTube's homepage which the user had trouble completing. She was able to delete her video but was not able to get back to the homepage while she was inside of YouTube studio. At the 26:01 mark, the participant opened a new tab to access YouTube's homepage. 23:32-- The moderator concludes the study and gets the participant's final thoughts which takes place from 23:32-26:01.
User #3
0:05-3:05-- The moderator welcomed the participant and explains the study. 3:10-6:25-- The moderator went through the pretest questionnaire and the participant answered every single question. 7:03-- The study began. 8:35-- The moderator assigned task #1- Create an account or login into a YouTube account. 9:42-10:20-- The participant had already logged into her account, thus successfully completing the first task. 10:23-- The moderator assigned task #2-Look up a video and from 10:34-11:11, the participant successfully completed the task. 11:41-- The moderator assigned task #3-Turn on the subtitles of the video which the participant successfully completed since she already had the subtitles of the video on. 12:06--The moderator assigned task #4- Make the screen of the video bigger or access full screen mode which the user successfully completed. 12:45- The moderator assigned task #5- Access the setting of the video and mess around with the speed of the video which the user successfully completed. 13:35-- The moderator assigned task #6-Interact with the comment section of the video which the user successfully completed. 15:10--The moderator assigned task #7- Access the creator channel and find its most popular videos which the participant successfully completed. 16:20--The moderator assigned task #8- Mark or save it to watch later one of the videos of the creator which the participant successfully completed. 17:30-- The moderator assigned task #9- Upload a video to YouTube which the user did not know how to do and asked the moderator for help and eventually completed the task. 24:49-- The moderator assigned task #10- Access the analytics of the user's content which the participant did not know how to complete. She had to ask the moderator for help. 27:06-- The moderator assigned task #11- Share the user's video on social media which the user did not quite complete since she did not remember the password to her social media accounts. She shared her video through email on the 27:23-28:49 mark. 29:09-- The moderator assigned task #12- Delete the user's video and get back to YouTube's homepage which the user had trouble completing. She was able to delete her video but was not able to get back to the homepage while she was inside of YouTube studio. At the 31:26 mark, the participant clicked the left arrow of her browser to get back to her last visited page until she made it back to YouTube's homepage. 31:50-- The moderator concludes the study and gets the participant's final thoughts which takes place from 33:04-35:03.
Top Findings
- The users were able to complete the majority of the tasks without any issues. Even though the speed of the process was slow at times, the users did not have any major complications throughout the testing.
- User 1 and user 2 struggled to find a creator's most popular videos. Instead of clicking on the option called, "popular", they searching for the video with the most views and likes. User 3 was able to complete such task but did not know how to access her videos and the moderator had to walk her through the process of uploading a video to YouTube. Also, the users were not able to get back to YouTube's homepage when they were in YouTube studio. User 1 and User 2 opened a new tab to access YouTube. User 3 used to left arrow to go back her last visited page until she made it back to YouTube's homepage.
Severity Codes
User 1 and User 2 were not able to complete task number 7 which consisted in accessing a creator's most popular videos. However, the severity of the issue did not prevent the user from finding the creator's most popular videos. They found an alternative way to do so which was to scroll down through the creator's videos and check the one with the most views or likes. If I had to rate the severity of this issue from 1 to 4, four being the highest, it would probably fall between the 1-2 category since it is not stopping the user from getting around the problem. User 3 did not know how to upload a video and had to be walked through the process of uploading a video. If the severity of the issue had to be rated from 1 to 4, four being the highest, it would fall between the 2-3 category since the user learned how to access her videos. However, YouTube does not indicate new users how to access YouTube and only YouTube creators know of the process. Lastly, there is no way to get back to YouTube's homepage from Youtube Studio. The users had to open a new tab to access YouTube or hit the left arrow on their browsers until they made it back to YouTube's homepage. If the problem had to be rated from 1 to 4, four being the highest, it would fall between the 3-4 category since YouTube does not provide a way to get back to its homepage from YouTube Studio.
Six Recommendations
- Indicate users that in order to upload videos and get access to their content, they have to click on YouTube Studio within their profiles.
- Add Youtube Studio to the homepage instead of hiding it in the user's profile It would make the process of uploading videos and allow users to access their content for more easily and quicker.
- Allow users to get back to their homepage while they are inside of YouTube Studio by creating an option to do so.
- Allow users to watch videos and scroll down to the comments without losing sight of the video when they are using YouTube on their computers.
- Allow users to edit the videos they plan on watching next when the auto-play option is on, instead of randomly choosing the videos for the.
- Specify what the option "location" within the filters mean.
Self Reflection
The most important lesson I learned during this assignment was to fully conduct a usability test and see all the component that a test consist of. I also learned that every website, no matter how popular or well put together it is, it would greatly benefit from a usability test. Prior to this assignment, I thought that YouTube did not have any problems. After conducting a usability test on YouTube I learned that it had quite a bit of problems I was not aware of. Overall, it was a stressful but satisfying experience that I had to go through to sharpen up my skills as a web developer.