Thinkaloud on our new prototype

To evaluate our updated prototype, we are doing a thinkaloud each. I asked a friend to use our prototype and think out loud while he was doing it. This form of observation helps us see what a user thinks when using our product, and what goes on in their mind when doing it. The main challenge with this is to get the user to actually think aloud during the observation, which can be easy to forget. My friend didn't have trouble with this so that was good!

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be quiet the whole time. I tried to let my friend use the prototype without interruption but I decided to explain some things about the functionality during the thinkaloud that I, in hindsight, probably should have explained before starting. If I do more thinkalouds in the future I will make sure to think about that!

I decided to film this with my phone camera so that I could save it and transcribe it later, rather than having to take notes and missing things. Since using a clickable prototype can be quite fast I think it's very easy to miss things if you are taking notes. However, my phone stopped filming after about 3 minutes so I didn't get all of it recorded. I took some quick notes afterwards to make sure I didn't miss anything important at least.

There were some issues my friend had with the prototype that only had to do with the fact that it was a prototype, like some things not being clickable and it not actually being a part of the SL app. I decided to not dwell on these things but it shows that it is important to really think about how your prototype works so these things don't disrupt the testing and evaluation.

• Clicks on the Karlberg station, enters the page with trains. Wonders about the direction, they're not very informative. 
• Notices that it's only the two closest trains that you can see information about (based on the graphic underneath them).
• Clicks on a train, "oh, so this shows we're you should sit"
• Confused about the "vagntyp" - "why do I need to know that?"
• Clicks on the sound icon, says it's cool, wonders how we would measure that
• Clicks on the "map"."What does this mean? Is the train between Solna and Helenelund? I don't understand this map".
• Goes back to the page with information about the train. "This train graphic looks like the train continues outside of the picture [on the left]"...

Overall my friend thought that the graphic underneath the trains in the list was a good representation of the crowding on the train, and that the map that showed where the trains were was very confusing, but that the core idea of it was good (seeing where the train is).