Web Sites Ethiopia

Questionnaires can be a useful alterative or supplement to task-driven user testing. The following sections describe some alternatives for identifying successful icons to use in your design. A similar set of approaches can be used to test link labels.

Interpret Thus Icon
Once you have candidate icon designs, you need to know whether your design makes any sense. A simple approach is to show the icons to users and ask them to write down what they think each icon means.

You can use a simple worksheet Form (download from http://www.mkp.com/uew/), or if you have a mockup of the site ready, show them the mockup and simply ask what they think each icon means in context. Don’t expect people to guess the icons correctly all the time, but identify your worst icons and keep working on them.

Match the Icon to Its Concept
While optimally icons will be recognizable in any context, many times it’s fair to assume that your users will understand the context and won’t be guessing the meaning of an icon in a vacuum.

For instance, if your users are domain experts, they’ll know what types of features to expect on your site, so they’ll have a head start in figuring out what an icon might do. Thus, in some cases, all you need to do is make sure that your set of icons can unambiguously be mapped to the correct concept. Form 9-4 demonstrates a simple way to test this. (Download from http://www.mkp.com/uew/.)

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