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Call for user test participants

Hi there, 

My name is Graeme and I'm part of the User Experience team here at the IET. Our remit is to help the IET create efficient, useful, pleasant and useable digital experiences. The best way to do that is to conduct research with prospective or actual users of the products and services in question. 

With that in mind, I wondered whether anyone on EngX would be willing to participate in some user research I'm planning to run over the next couple of weeks? To be clear, this is not research about EngX itself; it concerns other IET services.

Sessions would be around 50 minutes and can be carried out remotely. It's really helpful if you can; it helps us to make our products and services more valuable for all our members and to the engineering community as a whole. 

If you're interested, I can provide more detail. Pop me a line at graemeaymer@theiet.org for more info, or add a question to the discussion thread. 

Cheers! 

Graeme 

  • As an 60+ engineer on the Asperger’s spectrum I am probably part of your target audience. I find the phrases ‘User Experience team’ and ‘efficient, useful, pleasant and useable digital experiences’ in your post somewhat off putting. As I said when the current forum was launched “(it) seems to have been produced by ‘arty/creative’ people for other ‘arty/creative’ people and my not be accessible to the target audience (or what I assume is the target audience) or engineers and scientists who prefer a more structured system.”

    https://engx.theiet.org/f/discussions/27903/does-the-iet-have-a-policy-guidelines-on-neurodiversity

    I accept that the old FuseTalk forum had to be replaced but the format was excellent. There was a simple list of topics with an indication of new posts. It took seconds to see if there was anything of interest and the posts were in simple chronological order. It’s main drawback was the inability to host pictures, you had to use an external host.

    The next forum worked but lost the easy topics list.

    I have significant problems with the current forum. To me the treeing arrangement is difficult to follow, I have to click elsewhere to find where the latest posts are, one post can split into several intertwined threads at which point I don’t look at it anymore.

    I find it slightly sad that the best overview is found by using https://engx.theiet.org/f going back to what are DOS style commands.

    The low contrast colour scheme is not easy to even though my vision is reasonably normal. I imagine it must be impossible for those with impaired vision. The posting structure is also not logical to me. My first attempt ended in me shutting down Engx and going of to do something else.

    I am willing to take part in your research however my availability is limited in the next few weeks.

  • It is also worth looking at the threads like this one

     Platform update - 09-03-22 

     Reviving this Forum 

     This site is far too clunky to navigate :( 

     Forum Issue. 

    Indeed quite a few of the posts in  EngX Q&A

    discuss the shortcomigs of the forum

    Now in practice almost none of the issues raised have been resolved to the satisfaction of the original poster.
    For one, I would like the ability to add a signature/tag so that I do not have to keep typing regards Mike, and the ability for the system to recall my settings - so that it does not re-default to sending my PMs as a series of short posts separated by line breaks.  I;d like the ability to draw simple circuits and do formulae properly, as well as to embed images in a way that was less klunky.
    Layouts are odd so that if I knock the mouse while typing suddenly random things like cookie options or facebook tags or something appear.From time to time half hour typing labour of love replies just vanish and have to be re-created, which is very annoying indeed.
    If it helps your research, I can probably find you time in a few  slices of a 10-15  mins at a time over a week to discuss this but the exact times of day and day will vary.
    I'm in my 50s. and generally browse logged out of the forum, from firefox, either on Linux mint from home or W10 if it is a works machine, I then login to post.


    Mike.

  • Thank you Roger, for your response. 

    I would very much like you to participate in my research. Your comment and responses would be most helpful. I must disclose that I am not working on this forum as part of my work at the IET.  We would be looking at a different system. If you were happy to email me at graemeaymer@theiet.org I could provide more background and explain myself in more detail. Perhaps that could help dispel some of your misgivings around the job of user experience? In any case, feel free to get in touch. I'd love to speak to you. Thanks once again. 

  • Thanks Mike. 

    Just to be clear, this research isn't about EngX itself, this would be for a separate IET platform. Getting your voice heard to help inform the design process would be really helpful for me and for colleagues and members across the IET. I'd love to speak to you further. Would you be able to email me at graemeaymer@theiet.org to continue with this? That would be ideal. Thanks a million and hope to speak to you soon. 

    Best, 

    Graeme 

  • I'm still looking for volunteers to help us test improvements to our online tools for professional development. I've put together a registration form with all the information, a few questions and space to sign up. If you have around an hour to spare to help us make a difference, please sign up at https://forms.office.com/r/SY7fCsXtaa . Thanks and all the best.