I was just watching this YouTube video on portable air conditioners. The person is explaining how air conditioners work, and it’s pretty hard to follow.
I’m confident that a very large majority of the target audience would also find it hard to follow. And I’m also confident that this would be extremely easy to discover with some low-fi usability testing. Before releasing the video, just spend maybe 20 mins and have a random person watch the video, and er, watch them watch it. Ask them to think out loud, narrating their thought process. Stuff like that.
Moreover, I think that this sort of stuff happens all the time, in many different areas. As another example, I was at a train stop the other day and found the signs confusing. It wasn’t clear which side of the tracks were going north and which side were going south. And just like the YouTube video, I think that most/many people would also find it confusing, this would be easy to discover with usability testing, and at least in this case, there’s probably some sort of easy solution.
So, yeah: this is my cry into an empty void for the world to incorporate low-fi usability testing into anything and everything. Who knows, maybe someone will hear me.
I was just watching this YouTube video on portable air conditioners. The person is explaining how air conditioners work, and it’s pretty hard to follow.
I’m confident that a very large majority of the target audience would also find it hard to follow. And I’m also confident that this would be extremely easy to discover with some low-fi usability testing. Before releasing the video, just spend maybe 20 mins and have a random person watch the video, and er, watch them watch it. Ask them to think out loud, narrating their thought process. Stuff like that.
Moreover, I think that this sort of stuff happens all the time, in many different areas. As another example, I was at a train stop the other day and found the signs confusing. It wasn’t clear which side of the tracks were going north and which side were going south. And just like the YouTube video, I think that most/many people would also find it confusing, this would be easy to discover with usability testing, and at least in this case, there’s probably some sort of easy solution.
So, yeah: this is my cry into an empty void for the world to incorporate low-fi usability testing into anything and everything. Who knows, maybe someone will hear me.
To the degree that people do things only to signal, I don’t expect your idea to take off.