Usability Testing : “Pay attention to what users do, not what they say.”

There are many reasons why users uninstall apps. One of them is Usability. Your app might be crash or lag free but that won’t guarantee its success. Users uninstall apps because they don’t like using the app or they find it too difficult to use.

Apps fail because users don’t know

• Where to click next?
• If it is link or a label?
• Which Icon represents what?
• Prompts, toasts, errors are not user friendly
• How to exit a flow

As Jakob Nielsen so perfectly worded it, you must “pay attention to what users do, not what they say.” Ever since mobile apps began, their creators have been trying to understand what exactly their users are doing. According to a survey about how customers react to poor mobile app experiences. 48% reported they would be less likely to use the mobile app, 34% said they would switch to a competitor’s app, 31% would tell others about their poor experience, and another 31% said they would be less likely to purchase from the app company.

For ensuring the usability aspect of the app, we need to keep following things in mind:

1. How tech savvy the users are
2. Their environment (Network coverage)
3. Their Age range
4. Devices they use
5. Their interests

A lot of people confuse Usability testing with User testing. Well, here’s the difference:-

Some of the key characteristics of usability are:

Simple Design

The design should be simple catering to all user groups. The best example is:

The interface should not confuse users where to click, what to do on this screen etc. The screen should be designed in a way that it is self explanatory. If your design needs tutorial or user manuals, then it is not good design.

Good design does not need tutorials.

User Focused

Usability depends on target audience. An app designed for 5–8 years kids is different from an app designed for banking professionals. While doing usability testing, we need to take account of the behavior and habits of the users.

We can conduct moderated and unmoderated UX testing with user groups to understand how they are using the apps.

But how many users are required to do usability study? Research ( Virzi, 1992 and Neilsen & Landauer , 1993) indicates that 5 users are enough to uncover 80% of usability problems.

A lot of tools are available in market to understand user behaviors. You can use heatmaps for basic understanding of app usage.

Heatmaps : They tell where your users are actually clicking. How are they using the app. Are they clicking on dead ends? Is some flow undiscovered?

Tips for Usability testing

• Verify the app usability before development. Do static testing on wire-frames and mocks
• Check competitors’ app to understand target audience and the expected standards.
• Go for A/B testing when you are unsure about which flow will work.

• Assign a single observer to each user while using group study. This helps observer to accurately note tester’s behavior.
• Test all input methods for data entry: typing, voice, gestures, etc
• Check playstore/appstore reviews to understand the design implementation and expectation gap.
• If your app has good user-base, setup online forums and moderate them

and, remember —

Thanks for reading :-) , if you enjoyed it, hit the applause button below, it would mean a lot to me and it would help others to see the story. Let me know what you think by reaching out on Linkedin