[Testing] [Fwd: Re: Testing w/ kids - starting this Sat.]

[Mel Chua]

 From Frances - notes from the first observations at the Museum. Clearly 
we have a lot of adjustment to do...

---

Hello OLPCers!

Just returning from the Saturday testing at MIT Museum. The following 
are a few observations in regards to the experience:

--------------------------------------
Setting

Today was the first day of testing Mel's idea to get real feedback from 
student users of the XO machines at the MIT Museum. There were 6 XO 
units with 711 build that reside at MIT Museum and 5 XOs from 1CC that 
had the newest build 767 installed. The five from 1CC were put out for 
patrons to use while we busily upgraded the six MIT XO units to the 
current build. Once done we had out the MIT Museum XOs and put the 1CC 
units behind the table for volunteers to familiarize themselves with the 
new features.

There were a number of volunteers at the scene- Diane Serley (of 
XOexplosion.com), Michelle Kwak (from the MIT Museum), Bill Bogstad and 
Alex Wei (of olpc-boston) and a volunteer to the museum Yehnna. Seth 
Woodworth of 1CC also dropped in for the day.

The XOs were side-by-side on fold out tables set up toward the back 
corner of the first floor of the MIT Museum. Each had AC power and there 
were chairs for the patrons to sit at while they explored the XO 
machine. There was an OLPC slideshow going on behind the volunteers on a 
large screen.

We stayed at the MIT Museum between the hours of 1-4pm.

The idea was to use a questionnaire supplied by Mel Chua to guide 
guardians and their students to write their experience down as they were 
exploring the XO. The questionnaire is attached.

-------------------------------------
Experience

The questionnaire states that the idea of the "assistant" to the 
student, the one documenting the experience, should not touch or do 
anything for the students, but to let them try things out on their own 
and watch what happens easily and what confuses the students. What ended 
up happening was that the volunteers lead the student through the XO by 
reaching over and physically showing them how to use the touch pad and 
the "x" and "o" buttons. Even though I asked the volunteers to read 
through the questionnaire they still maintained their demonstrative lead.

There were many more adults than anticipated. There were probably about 
15 children during my time there, but generally they wondered over 
without their guardian and started using the XO with the help of the 
volunteer.

Volunteers answered questions regarding the focus of the program, the 
current deployments, the software and hardware of the XO as well as 
questions about the old fundraiser and the new one coming up.

----------------------------------------
Notes

I don't believe the setup at the MIT Museum works for the type of 
testing Mel was envisioning.

The questionnaire was much to long and detailed. We never even got 
anyone using it as we decided early on that this particular day should 
be our observation day where we see what the foot traffic is like, get a 
sense of what the students like and see how the testing may work in this 
given environment...our "baseline" in a sense.

Volunteers need to be trained to work in regards to the testing we hope 
to do. They are very efficient and engaging and have their own way of 
introducing and explaning the program.

There were not many students this particular Saturday. Diane mentioned 
that this particular Saturday was exceedingly slow in terms of foot 
traffic. Possibly because of the three day weekend.


----------------------------------
Overall I think familiarizing the QA team with what the Ed Team does 
would be helpful. I think Mel actually sitting in on a full Saturday at 
the MIT Museum will help focus the testing. Its a great environment for 
introducing our program to folks who may or may not have heard of us, 
but may not be the testing ground we were hoping for.

Ultimately I was able to note a few bugs I had not noticed before in the 
1CC setting, namely http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8814 about the 
WikipediaEN Activity. The other bugs, which have not been documented 
until I can reproduce them, deal with collaboration on Memorize Activity 
and Speak Activity.

Something I noticed was that the students generally went straight to 
Maze or Speak.

It was a good experience and makes me excited about proper testing for 
QA purposes!


-- 
Frances Hopkins


On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 6:27 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti 
<mpgritti at gmail.com <mailto:mpgritti at gmail.com>> wrote:

    Organizational details aside, I think this is a *great* idea. Looking
    forward for your reports. Thanks for the effort of setting this up!

    Marco





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