Can't we just watch people using the website without giving them scenarios?
Clients are sometimes concerned that usability tests are "unnatural" and would like to simply "watch people use the website" or feel that providing scenarios seems "forced." Providing scenarios makes usability testing more valuable because:
- You are testing the actions that are most important to your company. If users just "play" on the website, they may access areas that are "interesting" but not necessarily important to them.
- If the purpose of your website is to encourage users to be curious, look around, interact with others (and be exposed to advertising in the process) then asking them to "just look around" as they choose is appropriate. But, if you need to understand if users can, for example, find potential products on your website you need to set up a scenario to ask them to do that.
- Setting up standard scenarios provides directional information as to how prevalent a problem is. If all of the users look for the same product and 75% of them have the same confusion about a key term - you know there is a problem.
- For many sites, such as those selling consumer goods and services, scenarios are actually more realistic than "just looking around." Most of the time when people go to these websites it is because they want to accomplish something - find a product, get some specific information, pay a bill - they're not there "just to play." Scenarios are based on real-life actions users actually try to do on your website.
