Posted on Thursday August 16, 2007 in Work
Today I am sitting in the office of Peak Usabilty watching participants click about on some wireframes I mocked up in Visio.
This whole process has been really interesting. I installed a bunch of templates provided by GUUUI that allow you to use rough sketch-like lines and images and gasp comic sans to mock up very rough wireframes. The reason for making wireframes rough-looking is that people are more likely to offer criticism if something looks unfinished.
In my case, this was initially frustrating, as I had already mocked up the site I am working on in three different ways using XHTML and CSS, and they were looking good. Looking back, I can see the value in doing this rough style testing, though.
Peak have put the wireframes into an HTML document that the users look at using Internet Explorer 6, and then their clicks and mouse movements, as well as their facial expressions and voice, are recorded using Techsmith Morae – a pretty comprehensive tool for this kind of work.
I think I’m in for a pretty interesting day.