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The most critical aspect of user-centered design, usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world.
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The first thing to know about planning a usability test is that every test is different in scope, and results will vary a lot depending on the purpose and context of the test.
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Test with a reasonable number of participants—at least five and no more than 20. You can recruit testers yourself or hire an agency. Either way, all of your participants will expect an incentive for showing up.
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the total time for planning, running and analyzing is usually at least two weeks and can be as long as six weeks.
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Get a location. The location of the test can be as simple as a meeting room or as complex as a purpose-built facility.
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Next, you need to decide what you’re going to test. The best way to do this is to meet with the design and development team and choose features that are new, frequently used, or considered troublesome or especially important. After choosing these features, prioritize them and write task scenarios based on them.
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Scenarios should be:
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Short
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Specific. The wording of the scenario should be unambiguous and have a specific end goal.
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Realistic
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related to the user’s context.
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Every test should be accompanied by a legal form that addresses three important issues. The first is nondisclosure, a confidentiality agreement regarding a site or service that is under development.
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Next is the waiver, which gives consent to use any recording made during the test for the purpose of evaluating the site. Finally, the legal form should clearly state the participant’s rights, which informs participants about their right to withdraw, take a break, have privacy and understand the purpose of the test.
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The typical usability test requires three short questionnaires: the pre-test, post-task and post-test questionnaire.
Use a pre-test questionnaire during the session introduction to verify the qualifications of the participant and gather additional background information to help you analyze and interpret test data. They can vary, but a typical pre-test questionnaire includes questions about the participant’s job title, years of experience and frequency of use.
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After each task, you should provide the participant with a post-task questionnaire, which is usually more standard than the pre-test questionnaire. The purpose of the post-task questionnaire is to capture the participant’s perception of the task’s difficulty and to gather relevant comments where applicable. It should include standard questions such as, “How easy or difficult was it to complete the task?”
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The last questionnaire is the post-test questionnaire, which should capture the participant’s overall perception of the system’s usability and specific perception related to usability concerns.
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Once you’ve completed the task scenarios, write your test script. The test script is a guide for you to follow so that the sessions are conducted consistently and correctly.
The first part of the script is the introduction, which allows you to break the ice and explain what’s going to happen during the session.
The second part is the introductory interview, which allows you understand the participant’s context with the site being evaluated. This can include questions such as, “When and why do you typically use this site?”
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After completing all of your test sessions, you’ll have a ton of data. It’s now time to sift through this gold-mine and extract the most useful bits. Depending on how you collected your observations, this can be a formal quantitative analysis or more qualitative in nature. Regardless of the type of observations made, I’ve found that my best friend during analysis is Microsoft Excel. Enter all of your observations and questionnaire results into a spreadsheet, then analyze by grouping similar observations and extracting trends.
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Alex HorstmannThe most critical aspect of user-centered design, usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world. There are many benefits of usability testing, including uncovering
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Dave JefferyWhen I started this column, part of my motivation was to write about tools to empower Web designers—techniques they could take away and apply immediately. I’ve written an article on how information architecture can be a natural progression from Web design
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Dave jefferyWhen I started this column, part of my motivation was to write about tools to empower Web designers—techniques they could take away and apply immediately. I’ve written an article on how information architecture can be a natural progression from Web design
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Gagan DieshThe most critical aspect of user-centered design, usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world.
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04 Nov 06
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24 Oct 06
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Practical Usability Testing
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Are HallandPraktisk intro til brukartesting. (Joshua Kaufman - Digital Web Magazine)
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14 Feb 06
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