Testing Usability On My Backoffice

[ferrins]

Hi there!

Well, here's my problem: I just don't know how to approach this. The thing is that I've coded a web portal along with a backoffice tool to upload all the content you want, both from scratch. But now I need to test my backoffice's usability. But he main problem is that most of the tasks that I should ask to the user require some previous knowledgement of the backoffice functioning. So, I don't think I can ask the user to do all the tasks I want without getting him to understand how the backofice works, Can I? It'd would be a waste of time and the test results would be terrible. But in the other hand if I told the user how the backoffice works then it wouldn't have much sense to do a usability test, right? Gosh... I'm so lost can someone help me out... smile.gif

Thanks!

[encyclo]

Hi ferrins and welcome to WebmasterWorld! Any backoffice setup is going to require some prior training, but the usability of the system isn't necessarily related to the ability of the person to pick up how the system functions, but how the system performs in relation to the tasks required of the end-user.

An example would be a flawed system which would require repetitive clicks or wading through multiple levels of navigation to reach the most common tasks. You need also to test consistency - does the system always respond predictively to similar actions on different parts of the interface (ie. click OK to Save on one page, click OK to close on another).