What is your amazing user test eye opener?

Question

Lassooing users and putting them down to monkey around with your application may be the best way to spot deficiencies in your freshly baked program.

But it is also where some jaw-dropping things occur. Stuff you really did not expect to happen, made you facepalm for your own stupidity or the users, let us in on the fun!

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My story is not one of real stupidity, but just sheer disbelief:

I developed a simple game for elderly to gradually become acquainted with a mouse, from previous users it was obvious that we needed to be clearer about that the buttons of the mouse did not need to be pressed to move the cursor, no harm no foul.

However the next user came in, sat down and got straight into it of course pressing the buttons while moving and generally having a good time. But then in the next level, 'clicking', nothing worked, he did everthing properly, I took over to try myself...nothing. No click was registering, very weird, it worked ok with everyone else.

Luckily it was the last user, and time was up. So I went home to take a look at what was wrong. Turns out the program was absolutely fine... But the man, a welder his whole life with all his strength still there, had totally crushed the internals of the mouse in the first levels...I binned the mouse with a big grin on my face.

Needless to say, I did not see that one coming...

Answer 1

I find that the mum test is priceless. When I first started out, every website I made I showed to my mum and after 5 minutes she would manage to break it. It was definitively a good learning experience for me as to how non computer savvy users behave.

Answer 2

I worked on a project providing software running on a ruggedised handheld terminal for a particular field. We did user testing prior to field release, got the bugs ironed out and everything seemed fine.

I was one of the lucky ones on the 24 hour support line the first night it was live. The first two calls we received were "The text on the screen is upside down" (er, turn the whole thing the other way up) and "It's too dark for me to find the power-on button".

Answer 3

We had an algorithm one time that brought back results of the restaurants within 5 miles of the location specified in the search. First user tester managed to pick a place with no restaurants within five miles. All out testing had been in large city locations, no small towns which might not have anything near them. We changed the formula to bring back a mininum of 5 records and if five miles didn't bring it back to extend out to ten, and so forth until we found five restaurants. After that we tested that page by putting in Eek Alaska (nearest restaurant in our database was over 100 miles away) for the search criteria. I still get a kick out of the town name of Eek.