In two weeks, I'll be doing two days worth of my favorite task -- sitting down with physicians, one at a time, in front of a computer with Medscape on it and watching them use the site. We do these type of "user experience" tests on a regular basis and I do have to say that each time we do them, we are amazed at how much it drives the next several months worth of work on the site.
It was user testing that drove the changes to our CME pages over a year ago and user tests that also drove our more recent improvements to our navigation and search this year. What do we actually do? Well, we simply talk to docs and watch them use the site.
There are two schools of thought on how to do this best. One, as outlined in many books, including "Observing the User Experience," says that you should do a lot of planning in terms of creating ideal tasks for your users and then, during the session, you ask users to complete those tasks. This does work in identifying problems in the specific tasks you highlight, but how do you know that this is what your users actually want to do?
The method I much prefer, I learned from Mark Hurst and the folks at Creative Good. They call these sessions "Listening Labs" because that's exactly where they start and finish. With listening. Why should I ask a Doc to do something he's not interested at all in doing on Medscape? Much better to start with how a person uses Medscape (or any other medical info site) and then asking her to actually try to do it on our site. That way, the user is motivated and I get a better idea of what she is looking for and how she thinks about accomplishing it.
I'm confident that using this method yet again will result in marked improvements to Medscape and the experience of our users. Coincidentally, Mark has a great intro to Listening Labs in his most recent newsletter. Check it out here.
