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How much time does it take for a newcomer to get to the page with the flights? How many clicks does it take for the user to book a flight or find information for a flight? You can invent some more…

But how to ask the right questions when testing if these tasks can be accomplished easily without the user being confused?

The questions must be on point and must be easily related to the tester. What I mean is that the task should vary from user to user. Don’t ask “Try to book a flight from Los Angeles’ LAX to Toronto’s Lester B Pearson on the 23rd of November.”, but “Try to book a flight from your current residence to a holiday location for the weekend”. Tasks must be something a user would do. The service will actually be used by these people, and they certainly won’t try to go someplace and do something pretending they’re somebody else.

Except if you’re targeting a service for stalkers or maniacs

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Take the Wordpress upload pane for example. You have a tab and a button with the same label - “Browse” (for that matter the “Upload” is doubled too). People get confused. I’ve seen it at least thrice. They click on the tab when they really want to choose a local file to upload. Or choose a file and then hit the “Upload” tab, expecting the file to be uploaded. Yes, tech savvy people won’t get confused, but most people will.

Avoid duplicates, even in the face of the “Obvious”. People trust the labels in the virtual environment. They guide them. In the real world they know that if they see a sign Exit on two doors both doors will most probably lead out. They know the laws and common habits of this world, so they don’t feel the pressure of choosing the wrong door. Novice users feel the Internet as a place, not a method for accomplishing something. So uncertain of the rules “here” they’ll play by the ones they’re already comfortable with. And usually they won’t learn from their mistakes on their own. They don’t feel such a big difference between a tab or a button. After all, both have the same labels.

We can easily name the Browse tab “Attached files” or something like that. The “Browse” can become “Choose a local file” or even “Choose a file”. The upload tab can transform to “Attach a file” and the button can be left untouched. “Browse all” will look much better as “All attached files” or “All files”. These are just quick thoughts. If you put more time into that better suggestions will emerge for sure. What do you think?

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