User Tasks - Website Usability Testing Guide

User Tasks

Once you articulate your site’s goals and the steps users must take to complete these goals, you must articulate specific questions or tasks.  Frame your questions to ensure users can accomplish realistic tasks that reflect concrete goals.  

Some questions that you could ask include:

• Can a first time user find my agency’s mission?

• Can a return user remember how to find my agency’s contact information?

• How much time does it take for a user to locate a resource about eviction?

• How many errors do users make when trying to locate the “contact us” feature?

• When users navigate to the wrong page, can they go on to find the information?

• Do users respond differently to a red vs blue navigation element?

• Do users enjoy interacting with the site?

Establishing the tasks users engages in can help create a focused, specific test yielding results you can readily implement.  Often a user test will encompass more than one question, however the more specific the questions, even when combined into one test, the more effective  the test will be.

To help you articulate user tasks there is a Goals, Tasks & Script Worksheet on the attachment page of this guide.