Testing usability with parents and incoming students:
Presenter: Lori Packer, University of Rochester

Lori is a great presenter. Her session covered the basics of usability testing, as well as some of the unexpected results from her own experience. Last year she grabbed students and parents during the start of the orientation. With some trinkets she lured them to a testing room and spent an hour running through a series of questions.

Some of the interesting results:

• 2 types of people: searchers and browsers
• Parents tend to read the text looking for contextual clues.
• Students tend to “look with their fingers”. This means that they tend to keep the mouse moving as they hit the page. For them, things that change signify links (text or rollover images).