English 3050

Technical Communications
To
From
Date

Professor Vytautus Malesh

Robert Carver
October 23rd, 2015

Subject

Usability Testing and Results

To help improve and benefit the first draft of the instructions on How to extrude text in
Autodesk Inventor for Wikihow, a usability test was conducted. Two participants elected
to participate in this instruction test. The participants included two fellow employees.
One of which had very little experience in the program , while the other had over a
decade of hands on experience. By following the instructions of the user testing, the
participants were able to complete the tasks and help aid in the revisions of the
instructions.
Objective
To have the user achieve the task of extruding a chosen piece of text from a twodimensional sketch to a three-dimensional figure in the Autodesk Inventor Program.
Method
The participants that were chosen for the user testing for the instructions varied in
experience greatly. Participant 1 was a very experienced and skilled designer who has
been in the engineering field for over twenty years. With all of this experience, I assumed
he already had knew how to do this. I chose this man because I wanted to hear the
suggestions of someone with a vast amount of experience that teaches and trains
incoming Co-ops and interns. Participant 2 is one of the newest interns within the
engineering department. She was just getting into the three dimensional modeling aspect
of the program where extruding becomes a daily task. She was a great candidate to show
whether the instructions were clear enough to follow as she had next to no experience
with where certain commands are.
The participants were asked to complete two surveys during this usability test. One
survey was to be completed before the instructions were performed; while the other
survey was given after. I asked both participants if they were comfortable with me
observing visually while they were going through the instructions and both participants
agreed this was fine. The testing was done this way to see if the user was able to gain
some knowledge or comfort after going through the instructions. If a previous lack of
experience produced a positive result this could conclude the instruction set a success.
The process of testing gave the users ability to try this task on their own while I observed
how they were navigating through the menus and how fast they were able to complete
this task. This allowed me to gauge how well they were able to interpret the instructions.
Results/Discussion

As said before, Participant 1 has a great deal of experience and knowledge with this
program and Participant 2 if fairly new at this type of work. Although the experience
varied greatly, I believe that both of the users benefited from the instructions.
Participant 1 was very confident heading into the instructions. He proceeded through the
steps of opening and sketching a text box as if it was a natural operation. As said in the
instructions, there is more than one way to perform this operation. After step nine,
Finish the Sketch, he began to slow down and make sure he was following more
thoroughly. Proceeding with the guided instructions the participant completed the steps
very easily.
At the very beginning of the instruction set, Participant 2 seemed to struggle with step
five as this is more of a three dimensional command. Her previous experience has only
been with two dimensional commands. As I observed I noticed a hesitancy with where
the command icons were inside the window. I was asked for help even though I had said
at the beginning of the test that I was just there to observe. I insisted that she re-read the
instructions slowly step by step and to continue on. I noticed a few mistakes the resulted
in the undo command being used. This test ended up taking a bit longer than anticipated
but ended up with a successful extrusions of the text. I feel that is due to the inexperience
of the user.
Commenting on what I saw overseeing the participants, I felt as though the were able to
move from step to step very easily. However, with this type of program, I believe the
more experience navigating through the commands is very vital to how well the task is
performed. Lack of comfort really hindered Participant 2 as far as time went but not with
the overall completion of the extruded text. The process is really a pass or fail instruction
as you either get the outcome you are looking for or a left with a two dimensional sketch
on a three dimensional figure. This is why the instructions are written in a very detailed
process.
Conclusions
Although there were a few struggles with Participant 2, I feel as if the instructions were
very successful. My biggest concern was that I overlooked how experience with the
program can really hinder the performance of the commands when dealing with finding a
specific icon. Although I did have supporting pictures showing where the icons were, I
will be adding arrows to point out specifically where the icon is on the screen. Based on
the post instruction survey, I am confident that my instructions will help others achieve
the positive result of extruding text in Autodesk Inventor.