Usability 101: Introduction to Usability Testing
What is usability testing?
Usability testing is the practice of testing how easy the design to use. It usually involves observing users as they attempt to complete tasks and can be done with user interfaces or physical products. During the test, the moderator observes each participant’s actions, often also recording the test session on video. It is often conducted repeatedly, from early development until a product’s release. The main benefit and purpose of usability testing are to identify usability problems with a design as early as possible, so they can be fixed before the design is implemented or mass-produced. According to Wikipedia:
Your design will be tested whether you plan for it or not, once your system goes live and people start to use it, they’re testing it so why don’t you start collecting feedback with low risk. Recognizing this potential to highlight difficulties and strong points in a design’s early versions, is a vital part of a designer’s thought process. The broader the number of users the greater, the stronger the likelihood that designers can craft more successful products.
In this article, you will understand that usability testing isn’t something new we will talk about how it all started, people have been testing their products on their users for quite some time. In addition, you will understand how to conduct such a usability test in practice.
How it all started…
When did we start being concerned with usability? Some will say that such concern is part of being human. Interaction design mattered even then. But the field of usability research really came into being when the tools we used started to run up against our cognitive and physical limitations.
Many methods began near the beginning of the 20th century and had a strong influence through World War I and II when they developed weapons. Planes for example: were costly to make, were made useless after a crash, and caused extensive damage on the ground. Something had to be done to reduce human errors of aviators. By the end of World War I, two human usability testing labs were born, in Texas and Ohio, to conduct studies of pilots: what were the characteristics of a successful pilot? That’s the reason Edwin Link developed the first flight simulator in the early 1930s. The early years of usability focused on finding the “right kind of people” to fill the jobs of pilots. For a decade or so this strategy worked, but this demand wasn’t good enough.
Later on In the 80s, in these tests, participants completed task scenarios while using a keyboard and screens (we were not yet using a mouse). Most computer users had only basic training on operating systems and applications software. However, software design practices continued to assume that the users were knowledgeable and familiar with technical vocabularies and system architectures.
”The significant problems we have, cannot be solved with the thinking used to create them” Albert Einstein
Why?
It is a useful technique that allows designers to identify pain-points and usability issues at an early stage.
Usability Testing is an essential aspect of any user-centered approach that puts the user at the center of the development process.
By testing the right thing, with the right people, at the right time, we can reduce the risk of building the wrong product. In the long run, this will save time, money and improve customer satisfaction.
How?
Understanding how your customers interact with your product or service is key if you want to improve customer engagement and satisfaction.
By observing how real users interact with a product, we can improve or confirm if a feature is working correctly based on the results.
After analyzing the results of a usability test, the moderator reports on several points of interest that arose:
These include issues such as the aspects of the design that caused problems and the severity of these problems, as well as places in the design that the participants particularly liked.
1. Define your goals
How do you decide what to test? Having a solid goal is a must for effective usability testing. The more targeted your objective is, the better the outcome. Try to limit up to 1-3 goals, be specific as possible of the flow you want the user to go through because you’ll use the goals to come up with the particular study tasks. Here are some goals examples:
- Figure out if the user “Finds” the feature in the app/dashboard
- Figure out if the user understands the product/feature essence
- Figure out how the user feels using the app/dashboard (using the emotional reaction method)
- Figure out if the user makes the most out of the functionality
2. Choose test format
Now that you know your goal, you need to figure out how to represent your design for the study. There are many different methods of usability testing.
In-Person
The tester observes and interacts with the user during the testing sessions. Be prepared as possible with a script of questions and answers.
Monitored-Remote
The user completes actions remotely while being observed and engaged remotely in real-time by the tester. You can create an interactive prototype using a tool such as Invision. Whatever you create, make sure it will allow participants to perform the tasks you want to test.
Unmonitored-Remote
The user completes actions on his own, the results are reviewed at a later time. The power of this technique is that it focuses on what the user does and not what the user says. This kind of test reduces the risk of building the wrong thing and discovers problems very fast because you will get to a large number of participants. I found the perfect tool to create this type of test and its called Useberry.
3. Find your participants
In addition to goal setting, your test plan also needs to outline how and when to recruit test participants. It’s most effective to recruit those whose attributes match your target users. Be prepared. Participant recruiting is often one of the lengthier parts of any usability study and should be one of the first things you put into action.
Find highly distinct user groups that you’re trying to compare so for example if you know “first-time users” compared to “users that use this all the time”.
You might also have “admin users” versus your ”regular users”.
Depending on how many things you want to test it’s, in general, 5 users per test group, per round.
4. Plan your test scenarios
To keep yourself focused on your goal, you need a test plan, even if it’s a casual study. You’re gonna put these into a story that somebody can read and follow along. The scenario is kind of a character card for an actor, it puts them into context and gives them a sense of why they’re performing. This task gives them some motivation. The test plan will be in several sections:
Background information
Write a story to explain the purpose of the test to the participants, tell the users that we’re not testing them, we’re testing our product. Let them know if you’ll be recording the sessions, this session is for internal use only and will be helpful for your study. Ask them to please think-aloud throughout the study so you can understand their thoughts. There’s no right or wrong and they can’t hurt our feelings, tell them to be honest and true.
Tasks and questions
Start by asking participants a couple of background questions to warm them up. Then ask them to perform tasks that you want to test. For example, you could have them start on the home page and say:
- Take a look around and say what do you think this page is about?
- What do you like about this page? What you do not like about this page?
- What is your opinion on this functionality?
- What do you assume this section would do?
- What do you understand from this…?
Tip for scenario writing: You never want your scenario, to include words or phrases that can be found on the interface. Because then it becomes a word search activity, you will not be getting what you need from the test.
Also consider any follow-up questions you might want to ask, such as “How easy or difficult was that task?” and provide a rating scale.
After the test is finished, Make sure to write down any likes, dislikes, and recommendations during the test. A simple question such as “do you have any feedback for us?” will do the trick. This is the usability expert’s opportunity to uncover design opportunities.
Once the sessions are over, comb through your notes to look for more answers to the study’s goals, and count how many participants acted in certain ways and made certain types of comments. Determine the best way to communicate this information to help your team.
5. Summarize tests
Once you have the list of tested tasks, it’s time to put down metrics to track the success and failures of how users perform in these tasks. First, you need to determine if you succeeded to get to your usability goal and if not try to understand why so that you can analyze the completion rate at the end of your test.
You can summarize all your insights into the presentation as well so you will be ready to present this to your team when needed.
Unleash your creativity and test without consequences!✨ If you have any questions? Say hi ddaalliitt@gmail.com
