Memorandum

To: Miss. Enger

From: Group 14

Date: November 12, 2010

Subject: Usability Test Report

Introduction
We have created instructions for cooking a chicken pot pie for our unit 3 instruction unit.

This chicken pot pie combines tasty chicken with lots of veggies, and manages to be both healthy

and delicious. The target audience of our instructions is anybody who enjoys cooking

homemade food from scratch or someone just looking for something to make for dinner. We

received our original recipe from the Simply Recipes website and we then modified it to better

meet the needs of our target audience. We changed the crust recipe since the original recipes

crust was too rich and complicated to make. The original recipe also called to use ramekins to

make individual pot pies and we found this impractical since many people do not own them. We

changed the recipe so that it can be made in a 10 inch deep pie pan instead.

Objectives

Recipe Instructions

 That our target audience will be able to read and understand the steps in making a

chicken pot pie from the instructions given.

 For our audience to follow and administer the instructions effectively and without any

trouble or misinterpretations.
 Usability

 That the usability test will help give us insight to what changes can be made within the

recipe to improve the taste, the way it’s prepared, and/or to make it more versatile

amongst our audience.

 If changes to the format of the instructions are needed to make it easier for the audience

to interpret and understand when following along.

Method
Our instructions draft is similar to what our final layout will be. After we completed our

draft we noticed that some ingredients were in multiple sections of the ingredients. We saw this

as a problem because it is inconvenient for someone who is going to take the recipe out and go

shopping for the correct ingredients. We will be condensing the ingredient section to resemble

more of a shopping list. We will also include the specific ingredients for a particular section

within the instructions of that section. Our testers were in our target market; both had prior

cooking experience and enjoyed to cook. Both tests were conducted independently from one

another, in their respective kitchens. The location is exactly where it is required to take place.

We asked both of our testers to follow the instructions we had created as one of our group

members observed them, marking down any comments or suggestions they had throughout the

process. Upon completion of the test we asked the person being tested to answer some follow-up

questions.

Results and Discussion

We found out from performing our usability tests that our readers had a few difficulties.

One problem our readers commented on was that being that our recipe was three pages long it
made it difficult to switch from page to page to read what amount of ingredients were needed

when preparing one of the sections. Another thing that they commented on was that we didn’t

have what equipment needed to be used listed in a visible location instead you had to read almost

all the way through the recipe before you found out at the end. It was also suggested that we

possibly include a tip section. For instance putting a tip next to preparing the chicken and stock

method section that says you can use chicken breasts and chicken broth instead of boiling the

whole chicken; especially since boiling the chicken and stock takes an hour when a lot of people

don’t have that much time to devote to cooking. Our test readers liked that we listed alternatives

for some of the ingredients such as substituting fresh herbs for dried herbs. We also stated on our

recipe that it would take 3 hrs to make the chicken pot pie, one of our test readers said that it took

them less than 3 hrs. Our other reader found it took about 3 hrs to makes so we decided that we

were going to keep our time for our recipe at 3hrs since there will be some variance in the time it

will take to make. One other difficulty both our readers found in our chicken and stock section is

that it was hard to determine whether the chicken was fully cooked or not. Besides these minor

difficulties our test readers found our recipe easily interpreted and they also commented on how

much they liked the chicken pot pie.

Conclusion

After completing both of our usability tests we found that we needed to adjust our recipe

a little to make it more user friendly. Our test readers found it difficult to flip from one page to

another to find the specific amount of ingredients needed in that specific section. So we found

that our idea of placing the ingredients used in a specific section directly above the method

section that it pertains too would make it a lot easier for the reader. For instance we are going to

put the chicken and stock ingredients directly above preparing the chicken and stock section so
that the reader doesn’t have to flip the page to know how much carrots should be used in that

particular section. We also decided to add a shopping list and equipment needed list in the

beginning of our recipe so the reader will know exactly what they will need to make this recipe.

We also added in the chicken and stock section that the chicken should reach an internal

temperature of 160 degrees.