Test Plan
Scenario for Persona 1
Olivia is a 19-year-old college student living in an apartment with 2 other roommates and has a 1-year-old dog called Luna. She is a full-time student while also working a part-time, on-campus job in the admissions department of her college. She lives off campus and enjoys watching YouTube to get caught up with her favorite youtubers. She also uses YouTube for school purposes, whether that is lessons, documentaries, or watch videos of topics that were taught in school.
Olivia spends hours of her day a week in YouTube. Even though she is familiar with the application, she often finds it overwhelming to find a certain video of her favorite youtubers or a video that pertains to a school lesson. This results in lost hours that could’ve put toward other activities like cooking, interacting with her roommates, her dog, or just getting away from the stress that the college life can create.
She believes that her current method of finding videos is less efficient than it could be and wants to cut down the time she spends on this application each week so that she can have more time to interact with her roommates, her dog, cooking meals, and spend extra time on homework.
Scenario for Persona 2
Juan Rodriguez is a 40-year-old male, married, and has 2 kids a 1-year-old dog named Donut. He is a foreman of a refinery that is 30 minutes away from home. He works from 6 am to 5 pm 5 days a week but he is also sometimes required to work every day. He enjoys watching YouTube to get caught up with boxing, watch old movies, and videos that pertain to his job.
Juan spends 1 to 3 hours a day every week in YouTube and even though he is somewhat familiar with it, he often finds it overwhelming because he is not used to dealing with this kind of technology and often asks his kids and wife for help on how to navigate the application. The only other time he uses his phone is to keep in touch with relatives and friends. This results in hours of the day that could’ve been spent on family time, run errands, and getting a proper night of sleep.
Juan does not want to rely on his wife and kids to navigate YouTube and would like to find an efficient way to navigate the application and find videos far quicker and more efficient so he can spend time with his family, check on his relative and friends, and get a proper night of sleep every day.
Goals for the Test
- Efficient – Users can find the video they are looking quickly and in less than 3 steps
- Effective- The user finds the video they are looking for. If the user searches for a video, the results show a list of videos related to what they searched.
- Engaging- Relevant content is on the site. In this case, YouTube contains videos, movies, and music for the user to watch or listen to.
- Error tolerant- The user should not be able to experience any errors while conducting the test
- Easy to learn- The instructors are clear, easy to understand, and the user does not have to go through less than 3 steps to search for a video or the topic they wish to watch videos about
Scope of the Project/Number of Users/Length of Sessions
- 3 users, each with a 45-minute session
Tasks/Scenarios
Olivia's Task: Find a specific video
Olivia’s direction: Click on the search bar and type in the name of the YouTuber or the topic you wish to know more about. You can also search for it by clicking on the microphone icon next to the search bar and speaking to it. If you want to find a certain video of your favorite youtuber, you can click on their channel, then click on the search icon within the channel and search for the name of the video. The previous approach is only available using a computer or tablet and is not available on the mobile version of YouTube. You can also click on videos and scroll down until you find the video you are looking for; however, this is a longer approach. If you are looking for a series of videos, clicking on playlists within the youtuber’s channel will take you to the playlists that the youtuber created for their subscribers. This eliminates the need to look for every single video in the series. Another approach to this problem would be to click on the search bar and type the name of the youtuber alongside the name of the video you want to watch. You can narrow down the number of searches by using filters, located on the top left of the screen. Once you are inside of filters you can specify what to look for and YouTube will narrow it down according to your specifications. It is important to note that the filters option is only available using a computer or tablet. The mobile version of YouTube does not give the users the filters option.
Juan's Task: Find a specific video
Juan’s direction: Click on the search bar and type in the name of the topic you wish to know more about or the name of the movie you want to watch. You can also search for it by clicking on the microphone icon next to the search bar and speaking to it. You can narrow down the number of searches by using filters, located on the top left of the screen. Once you are inside of filters you can specify what to look for and YouTube will narrow it down according to your specifications. It is important to note that the filters option is only available using a computer or tablet. The mobile version of YouTube does not give the users the filters option.
Pretest Questionnaire
- What is your experience with technology?
- Are you familiar with YouTube and? If yes, how did you find out about it?
- What do you use YouTube for? What is most important to you on this site?
- What devices do you use to access YouTube? (Computer, tablet, smartphone).
- How many hours do you work and how many hours of free time do you have?
- How long does it take you to find a video in YouTube? Do you believe the current process you go through is efficient enough or do you find it frustrating?
- Is there anything on YouTube that you would like to have that isn’t currently there?
- Is there anything about YouTube that does not work as well as you might like?