Usability Report: Format and Genre

Rhetorical situation. Assume that your group is a team of document design consultants that has been hired by some organization to evaluate the instructions and recommend whether they are good enough to distribute to the public. Invent any details necessary to fill out this scenario. For example, you may assume that employees are accidentally destroying data due to faulty instructions for performing some task and that the company hired you to revise the instructions and show that they are now successful. Or your team may have been asked to write the instructions for a new commercial product that the company is planning to market. In any case, your report must make some recommendation about what the company should do with the instructions you evaluated: (1) go ahead and distribute them, or (2) do more revision and testing.

Topics to address. Your goal is to present a professional report that is both informative and persuasive. It should inform your reader (both present and potential) of your activities. It should also persuade your readers that you conducted a responsible investigation, that your conclusions are valid and that your recommendations are worth following. Remember that reports are saved as documentary evidence; you are also writing to an implicit audience of consumers, regulators, and future administrators.

Format and Genre

Technical reports follow a very specific organization. Your report must conform to the "executive plan." Your report must be clearly organized, with obvious headers, and must follow all document design guidelines covered in the course. It must include the following elements, in this order:

1. Title Page. This is a single page. A clear and and limiting title is centered on the page. The date, course name and number, and names of report authors are right justified at the bottom of the page.

2. Table of contents (TOC). This is typically a single page. It must be comprehensive and inclusive. Provide number, title, and page number for each section. Provide letter, title, and page number for appendices.

3. Table of figures and graphs. This is formatted like the TOC. The table will list number, title, and page of all figures and graphs.

4. Abstract/executive summary. This is typically less than two pages. It states the conclusion and summarizes the key facts. It should be compactly phrased, and include key numbers and statistics, but it should not attempt to cover the entire range of data. Nor is it an introduction. List the authors' names at the end of the executive summary.

5. Body. Composed of several sections.

• Begin with an introduction. Indicate topic and purpose of document. Briefly describe the situation and audience. Give a brief overview of testing and document. State the conclusion. Remember, each subsection of the body will need a brief introduction as well.
• Within the body of the report, you will include subsections covering the following: review the background / purpose of the instructions, state the objectives of the study, describe the testing methods used and criteria for success, analyze the results, and use the analysis to support your recommendations.
• You must summarize the overall data, and highlight specific / selected data (numbers, descriptions). Refer to graphics and appendices to support your presentation.
• You must decide between a point-by-point comparision of the two test groups, or a linear whole-to-whole approach.
• End with a conclusion that clearly states your recommendation. You may reiterate the key findings of your test in bullet form.

6. Appendices. Includes all actual documents, including test interface, instructions. It is not necessary to include the raw data, though you may choose to do so or to include selected examples.

Remember you have to live with your results, however messy or unpopular they are. The user-test is not a final evaluation but a tool for improving a company's documentation.