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The Influence of Participant Personality in Usability Tests
Ali Alnashri, Obead Alhadreti, Pam J. Mayhew
Pages - 1 - 22     |    Revised - 31-05-2016     |    Published - 30-06-2016
Volume - 7   Issue - 1    |    Publication Date - June 2016  Table of Contents
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KEYWORDS
Usability Testing, Think-aloud Protocol, Personality dimensions.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the results of a study investigating the impact of participant personality on usability testing. Data were collected from 20 individuals who participated in a series of usability tests. The participants were grouped into 10 introverts and 10 extroverts, and were asked to complete a set of four experimental tasks related to the usability of an academic website. The results of the study revealed that extroverts were more successful than introverts in terms of finding information as well as discovering usability problems, although the types of problems found by both groups were mostly minor. It was also found that extroverts spent more time on tasks but made more mistakes than introverts. From these findings, it is evident that personality dimensions have significant impacts on usability testing outcomes, and thus should be taken into consideration as a key factor of usability testing.
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Mr. Ali Alnashri
School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia - United Kingdom
aalnashri@tvtc.gov.sa
Mr. Obead Alhadreti
School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia - United Kingdom
Dr. Pam J. Mayhew
School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia - United Kingdom


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