More user testing this week, and a summary of all my testing from this round. The two new testers I worked with were named Greg and John. John and Greg both are pretty harsh critics and Greg had lots of input. Both thought the site was usable and intriguing, but both also felt a few tweaks were needed before it became very useful. Greg thought some of the numbers were not correct, but they were straight from the US government. After a discussion about my sources, he still disagreed that the estimated food costs for him were way off. The truth is, I realized that my target audience probably has a tighter budget than him, and I should probably add this to my persona profiles.
One of the biggest things I learned during this round of testing was that I needed to work on my global navigation and standardize my user interface iconography a bit more. I will have to come up with a few major solutions to fix my navigation mechanism, but I think it will make my project much more user friendly. Some of my testers expressed that they would be hopping around and ignoring the flow I designed, so it’s going to be important to plan for this type of user.