Ease of use and accessibility

Do any of you think about the accessibility and ease of use of your forums?

I was thinking about this today and I have decided to try and get a non-forum user (my Dad) to try and register on our forums, make a thread and reply to a few posts just to see if its possible for him to easily do it confirming that its either too hard or really simple for all.

I was also wondering about the concept of forums in general to non-forum users, like how they see their purpose which I plan on asking him after

Anyone got any other good testing ideas because it is really hard to put yourself in a newbie to forums mindset.

 

Give them a set of directions and see if they can follow them. Honestly, the first site I joined that had an incorporated forum was Meez. I had no idea what I was doing. Registered to create a virtual me, and browse the nation, play games, etc. Later made my way to "Community" read the Welcome Message, and the rest, is history.