[Sigia-l] testing content for websites

[Todd Warfel]

First question you ask is what's the goal? Sounds like here it's  
reading comprehension (or see if the copy is understandable to the  
target audience). So, we want to design a testing situation that  
tests comprehension. To do this, you're going to need to use the real  
content.

So, you take a few paper prototype screens, (or you can mock up PDFs,  
or HTML pages). You ask them to describe their family medical  
history. The person says they have a history of diabetes in the  
family. You run with that.

You describe a scenario to someone "A member of your family has  
diabetes. You've been searching for information about what you can do  
and expect..." the primer continues to make this real for them.

You ask them how they might try and find information related to  
diabetes. They answer something like "I'd google this, or search  
through AOL" or something similar. You respond "Okay, we'll assume  
you searched for it on Google and get back something like  
this.." (show them the first screen) "What would you do from here?"

They start reading, perhaps they click a link and go to another page.  
After a predetermined amount of time (might be an actual time, like 2  
minutes, or "when they finish exploring), you pause them and ask them  
a couple of questions to determine their comprehension. The key would  
be to have these questions based on something they say during their  
initial conversation.

For example, during the initial conversation, you ask, "What types of  
information would you want to know about diabetes?" They answer "What  
kind of foods can the person eat? What kind of health complications  
are involved? Does it mean they can't have any sugar?" So, when  
they're done reading, you pose those questions back to them.

This will let you know if the content is relevant to what they really  
want to know, as well as whether or not they can understand it.

It's kind of a mix of usability, findability, and value testing.

On Sep 26, 2005, at 9:40 AM, katherine lumb wrote:

> A colleague of mine who works in pharma is trying to figure out how to
> extensively test content for a website. Essentially, he's looking  
> for a way
> to evaluate reading comprehension in the loose context of a  
> website. Any
> thoughts?
>
> See a more detailed description of his task below.
>
> Thanks,
>
> K


Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Design & Usability Specialist
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