Moderator Script
Good morning/afternoon. My name is Heather, and I will be the moderator for this study today. How are feeling today?
(Give the participant a moment to speak)
Okay, let’s get started. I would first like to thank you for participating in this usability study. I do appreciate the time you have taken to help me with this.
I first want to make you aware that I will be reading from this script to ensure that I say the same words to each participant in the study in order to prevent bias.
What we are doing today is a usability test for the website for Kohl’s. A usability study is performed in order to what different people’s impressions of a website are, which things are difficult and which are easy to do. As a reminder, we are testing the functionality of the website, not you.
When we get started here in a moment, I will ask you to complete a series of tasks that are typical to what normal users may try to look for when using this site. We want to know what your first instinct is in how you look for different things, but we also want to know what you are thinking about while you are doing this, different impressions that you get from the website.
One very important thing I will ask you to do is to think out loud while you are looking through the website and performing the tasks. If you are frustrated with something, or you find something really easy and think “Wow, that was easy”, or your thought process in navigating the site might sound like “Okay, I’m going to go over here and click on this button in order to do this…”.
I am aware that that sounds very weird, but trust me when I say that it is actually very helpful to this study. I would like to reiterate that we are testing the website and not you, so there are really no wrong answers here. Our hope in this is that we can find ways to improve the website for the future.
Before we begin, I want to let you know that I am going to be videotaping you and your screen to watch where you are moving to within the website. We are also recording what you say while you are thinking out loud, those impressions that will be helpful in this study. If you could please verbally acknowledge that you are okay with being recorded for the purpose of this study.
(Give the participant the opportunity to assent to the statement)
Thank you. Okay, this is what is going to happen. I am going to give you a set of tasks to complete where you will need to move through the website in order to accomplish. You will not have to purchase anything on the website or create any login credentials using personal information. I will give you one task at a time, and you will let me know when you believe that you have finished each task, at which point I will give you the next task.
Do you have any questions before we begin?
(Give the participant a moment to respond)
Okay, let's get started.
First, we are going to start with a short pre-test questionnaire before we get into the usability test.
(Pre-test questionnaire)
Can you tell me what your first impressions are of this website?
(Give the participant a moment to respond)
(Start the task list)
(At the end of the tasks) Do you have any concluding thoughts after using this website?
That concludes our usability study. Thank you for your time and help with this study today. I appreciate it.