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stltoday.com Usability Study --
Scenario to find and buy archived story

The following scenario was used during the stltoday.com usability study. Due to difficulties in using the web site, no one was able to completely perform the scenario successfully.

You just spoke on the phone with a New York customer who happens to be a big baseball fan. During this conversation, he wondered if there was any way you could send to him an article that appeared in the St. Louis newspapers the day after the historic 62th home run of Mark McGwire.

You decide to go to stltoday.com to find a good article that covered the event that day. You don't recall the exact day of McGwire's home run, but you do remember that it happened in September 1998, and that it was the 62nd home run that broke the record for home runs in one season.

Since it is an old article, you expect that you might have to pay for it, and you have a credit card handy to do so.

You plan to print the article and mail it to your client.

  • Go to stltoday.com
  • Find an article that covered Mark McGwire's 62nd home run.
  • Make sure the article appeared at the time of the home run.
  • You recall the home run occurred in September 1998.
  • Print it.

back to discussion of difficulties performing this scenario
back to main page of stltoday.com usability study

Written by Joe Grant
Grant Consulting, Inc.

Posted on August 30, 2001

 

 
Grant Consulting, Inc.
located in metro St. Louis, MO, USA
1013 Bradington Court
Columbia, IL 62236
info@grantconsulting.com
(314) 581-0384
Copyright © 2003 by Grant Consulting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

What an actual usability test looks and sounds like...

In this scenario, someone tries to find an archived story about Mark McGwire.

Windows Media Player, 100k streaming
4 min.
9 min.

RealPlayerG2, 80k speed
4 min.
9 min.

Best Playback -- Windows Media AVI file, includes codec install
4 min. 13 Mg download
9 min. 38 Mg download

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Also available...
usability storyboard --illustrates how usability testing works