Who: Lia Markey, Isabella Magni, Pamela Smith, Tianna Uchacz

Title: Usability Testing

Short Description: This session will provide the tools and best practices for conducting usability testing on premodern digital humanities projects, using our resources—the Newberry Library’s Italian Paleography website and the Making and Knowing Project’s digital critical Edition of a sixteenth-century art and technical manuscript—as case studies. Ensuring usability is essential to the functionality and use of a website. Yet it is often forgotten. We will first introduce the group to the two sites and general issues of usability testing (user groups, recruitment, testing types, analysis, next steps). Then we’ll create two breakout groups of participants to model how to conduct usability testing, with discrete tasks and techniques (bring your own computer). Finally, we will return for a group discussion of the hands-on experience and work through best practices for designing effective, measurable tasks for usability testing.

Resources, Tools, Projects: handouts on usability testing to be provided

Length: 3 hours