thinking aloud with martin nilsson

I had a 21 year old woman from Germany perform the think-aloud.  While not exactly a thespian (experienced or otherwise), I felt her artistic background put her as close to our “crazy persona” as a social reject like me could manage to dig up.

I served her the mandatory disclaimer: Prototype is a prototype and has limited functionality. (This had to be repeated several times throughout the process. Complaints about functionality have been included anyway in the name of completeness. Also it was pretty funny.) I further explained what the intended purpose of the product was, etc., providing some context to the abstract implementation of the application.

QUIZ:

Right out of the gate, she made fun of the grammar mistake in the first question. She exclaimed she was a genius when she got the second question right, but I had to explain how the thing is just bugged and you can’t actually fail any subsequent question if you pass the firs. A crippling blow to her confidence, but we powered on. Finally, she voiced some miscellaneous issues regarding the specific questions chosen. Ultimately, however, there was not much usable intel.

QR-SCANNER:

So she pressed the QR-code and got to the rocket info, which she wasn’t really interested in, and because of some misaligned text didn’t realize the Aeroplane picture linked to ANOTHER exhibit, but I told her it was and she said Oh.

SETTINGS:

She didn’t know what the Clear Exhibits button did and frankly neither did I. She wanted to change the language to her native Latvian but quickly figured out it doesn’t actually work and promptly began criticizing me for it.

OVERALL:

With the limited functionality in mind, there wasn’t a whole lot for her to reflect on. She said the overall idea was cool, though, and that as long as the information from the app acts as a supplement, rather than a replacement, it’d be a welcome addition to her museum experience. She was positive toward both the idea of treasure hunting and answering quizzes.

As a finale to the entire thing, she left me with a quote. I suspect this quote is a bit of a jab at the limited functionality but, again, for completeness, I will include this too: “It accomplished absolutely none of the parameters set out by the project unless those parameters were to make the least functional and useful webpage ever.”