February 24, 2021 - Diving into user testing

What an action-packed session! This week we were joined by some of Canada’s user testing experts and learned about what bringing civic user testing to Calgary might look like. Scott Dillon started off by telling us about his story in finding his place with tech user-testing with PLATO (ProfessionaL Aboriginal Testing Organization Inc.), and how this organization has hired 1000 Indigenous user testers to gain insightful data and represent diverse communities. Next we heard from Mike Hrycyk from PLATO, who walked us through his experiences with user testing and a few tips on what we might consider when moving forward with civic user testing:

1. Be the expert on your application

2. Consider what you want out of the test

3. Consider issue management carefully

4. Have a feedback mechanism

5. Make people feel valued

After this insightful conversation about PLATO with Scott and Mike, Marisa joined us from GRIT (Gathering Residents to Improve Technology) to talk about how her team under Code for Canada is building tech capacity with civic user testing groups in Toronto. In her experience, she was engaged with design, recruitment, partnerships and data management to bring about effective user testing that emphasizes their core value of treating their participants with respect. In their civic-focussed approach, library and community centres replace lab settings, tests are held after working hours, diverse representative samples of residents are selected, and trust and empathy with participants is at the forefront of each test. Marisa gave us ten tips for creating civic-user testing groups in Calgary:

1. Understand the local context

2. Have a plan for everything

3. Don’t wait for the perfect test

4. Don’t wait for the perfect client

5. Build a go/no go framework

6. Validate, iterate, validate, iterate, continued…

7. Put a “Pilot” on it

8. Always go back to your principles

9. Lean on other civic testing/tech groups

10. Close the feedback loop

To finish up our information-packed session, we heard from Monique Symes from the City of Calgary’s Smart Calgary sector, where she talked about what Calgary has done to promote economic opportunity and address empowerment and inclusion in the context of Calgary as a Smart City. She mentioned that the next steps for Smart Calgary is to address digital inequality in the context of tools, access and affordability and education - giving us something to look forward to learning more about in the coming future!

SH