Desktop Widgets
Desktop widgets (a la Google Gadgets and Yahoo Widgets) were being developed for business applications. Combining web, business, and desktop metaphors was proving to be a difficult usability and design problem. We conducted two usability tests to validate the metaphor and test early-stage UI design issues.
Our Approach
We performed two usability tests to identify issues and benchmark usability. In addition a thorough interview followed testing to inquire about the design metaphors and design issues. Task completion rate, time on task, and errors were collected, as well as Usability Magnitude Estimation.
UME proved particularly effective as the code base, while "live," was clearly early stage, which impacted the validity of the performance-based metrics. It also enabled quick perceptual comparisons to the known consumer-oriented widget metaphors of Google and Yahoo.
Delivering Value
Validated that business application users did understand the desktop widget metaphor. In fact, they were quite excited by the business potential overall, an unexpected but welcome finding.
Successfully collected usability metrics and feedback to provide usability feedback for UI design issues.
Prioritized the issues into Marketing Opportunities, High Priority Issues, Opportunity, and Stable. This greatly aided deciding how to dedicate limited development resources to all the design directions being pursued.