Running head: USABILITY TEST REPORT 1

Objectives of the Test

The purpose of this test plan is to assess the instruction manual’s effectiveness and procedure for manufacturing home-made surgical face masks. It aims to find gaps that might exist within the outlined steps and find remedies to such gaps to create a seamless and practical manual for making face masks. The test plan focuses on the crucial stages of the process that are key in making the masks. If some of the steps fail to work, the whole process of making the mask may fail. Therefore, the key focus of this test plan is streamlining the complete manual for making surgical facemasks so that the manual serves the intended purpose.

The Test Plan

The test plan is a set of tasks that the manual’s user must perform to ascertain how practical the manual is. Besides, it gives highlights of what the facilitator should use to determine whether the participants are following the manual correctly or not. It also stipulates what should be recorded during the test for the participant to know what worked and what didn’t at the end of the test. The test plan, despite involving the whole procedure of making the masks, focuses more on the process’s crucial steps, which have considerable significance on the entire procedure. Therefore, the test plan will place a greater emphasis on the cutting and joining together the cloth materials, attaching the ear loops, and making the pleats.

Facilitator:

First of all, hi, [name of participant], my name is Joanna (Yuemeng Wang), and I am going to be walking you through this session today.

Before we begin, I have some basic information about this study that I want to tell you. And I am going to read it aloud to make sure that I cover everything. I am asking you to test the instructions of the surgical mask making. This session would be approximately 30 minutes.

I want to make it clear that we are testing the instructions not you. You can’t do anything wrong here. As you work through the instructions, I’m going to ask you to try to think out loud: to say what you’re looking at, what you’re trying to do, and what you’re thinking. This will be a big help to us.

Also, please don’t worry that you’re going to hurt our feelings. We’re doing this to improve the instructions, so we need to hear your honest reactions. If you have any questions as we go along, just ask them. I may not be able to answer them right away, since we’re interested in how people do when they don’t have someone sitting next to them to help. And if you need to take a break at any point, just let me know.

Also, [names of any observers] observing this session. They are here to take notes on how the instructions work, not on how you perform them.

Now I’m going to ask you to try doing a specific task. I will read it aloud, and if you need me to read it again, please let me know.

Follow the following steps in conducting the testing procedure.

USABILITY TEST REPORT 2

1. Cut a rectangular piece of cloth, 8.5” wide and 16” long. Cut four pieces of fabric ties 18″ each. The instructor should use a ruler to determine whether the participants have followed the correct measurements.

2. Fold the fabric in the middle and join the top edge by sewing it together. To determine whether the participant is following the manual, they should leave 4″ opening along the side of the stitched material to act as a pocket for inserting the filter fabric.

3. The other crucial step is on attaching the ear loops. The fabric strands should be connected on the edges of the mask by holding them using pins and then sewing together. The ear loop should be outside once the mask is turned inside-out.

4. The last step is about making the pleats. The participant should mark three equally spaced lines on the cloth fabric and fold it along those lines to form pleats. The wrapping should be held at the edge of the cloth by the use of pins. The sewn to make them fully attached

5. After sewing the pleats, try to insert the fabric material and through the side opening. Notice how easy or hard it is to enter the material. The above procedure should not exceed 30 minutes

6. Try to wear the mask and see if it fits. Try to give it to a child and see whether it fits too.

Predicted Test Results

From the test conducted, it was revealed that many of the steps were correct and led to the desired outcome. However, there was a challenger with the measurement of the masks. The measurements outlined in the manual are suitable for adults. The instruction manual lacks measurements for children. Therefore, to make the whole process clear, the measurements for children’s masks are necessary. To make such masks, the rectangular fabric should be 14 inches long and 6.5″ wide. Similarly, it was realized some of the pleats were wide apart, to correct that, the pleats should be overlapping and evenly folded. The user should also use a ruler to make the correct measurements.