Testing.. Testing.. Usability Testing!
As an IT professional, of course, you have experienced when you created your application design or your application code. But have you ever wondered, what if our users do not know how to use our application? Or can our features be understood by our user? Can our users use the application usability well? If not, what can we do to make our application better? you can listen to your user by doing Usability Testing! It is pointless if you have already created an application yet the user cannot use our application, right?
Usability Testing
Usability testing refers to evaluating a product or service by testing it with representative users. Typically, during a test, participants will try to complete typical tasks while observers watch, listen and takes notes. The goal is to identify any usability problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data and determine the participant’s satisfaction with the product. — usability.gov
As it is described above, usability testing is useful if we want to observe the user if they can easily use or product or not. With the result of usability testing, we can identify our usability problems and enhance our product to make it better!
Why Usability Testing?
Why do we need usability testing? Actually, there are several benefits if we do usability testing towards our product. First of all, we can analyze the performance to observe if it meets our usability objectives. Furthermore, we can identify the problems of our product design or service. We can also identify changes that are needed to improve our user performance and satisfaction.
Not only that, but we also can learn our targeted user’s preferences and behaviour so that we can improve or adapt our product to fit our users’ preferences and behaviours.
Types of Usability Testing
there are several types of usability testing, some of them are:
Qualitative vs. Quantitative
Qualitative usability testing
this type is more common than quantitative usability testing. It is best for identifying problems in the user experience. It is also used to observe the user’s responses, satisfaction, and perceived level of effort or difficulty.
Quantitative usability testing
It is used to know time users take on a task, the user efforts, and also to know the failure and success rates. It focuses on collecting metrics that illustrate the user experience. This type is best to gather benchmarks.
Remote vs. In-Person Testing
In-person usability testing
In-person usability testing means that the facilitator conducts the usability testing to the participants in the same physical place or location. The facilitator will observe, take notes and ask for feedback to the participant.
Remote usability testing
same as in-person testing, in remote testing, the facilitator also interacts with the participant, however, they do not in the same physical place or location. The remote testing often is performed using video conferencing platforms, such as zoom and google meet. There are two types of remote testing:
- Remote moderated
Same as in-person testing, however, they do not in the same physical place or location. The remote testing often is performed using video conferencing platforms, such as zoom and google meet.
- Remote unmoderated
Same as remote moderated, however, the facilitator or researcher uses the online remote-testing tool and the participant will do the task by their own time. After they finish the test, the researcher will receive the session’s recording and also the metrics.
Conducting Usability Testing
There are several ways to conduct usability testing. Usually, the facilitator here is the UX researcher. However, in this project, we, as developers, conduct usability testing. Also, the usability testing often is held in a cozy place such as a campus library or we can say that we do the in-person testing. However, because of this pandemic condition, we do the remote moderated testing using zoom or google meet.
There are several steps to be done to start usability testing. Starting from the pre-UT phase, the UT itself, and the post-UT.
Pre-UT
based on this article, before we run the UT, you should:
Plan
Define what you want to test
we should ask ourselves questions, such as what features that want to be tested?
Decide how to conduct the test
then we decide, how to conduct the test, do we want to conduct it remotely or in-person? for my project, we use in-person testing using zoom or google meet.
Set user tasks
Prioritize the most important tasks to meet objectives
we should allow a 60-minute timeframe. and no more than 5 tasks per participant, for example.
Clearly define tasks with realistic goals
we should know our realistic goals for each scenario. It can be documented using applications such as Microsoft Excel or google sheets.
Create scenarios where users can try using the design naturally
we create scenarios and let them do the scenarios on their own rather than direct them with instructions.
Recruit testers
we should know what users that want to be targeted. For example, our project is an application for art exhibition and auction. So, we tried to reach participants who are into art, such as design freelancers.
UT
Facilitate or Moderate Testing
If you use remote testing, before conducting UT, make sure that you have already shared the link of the video conference. And when it starts, observe and interview the user. If the user fails or is hard to use the features, do not forget to record it on the sheets that you have made or sheets that can be seen above. Make sure that you record all of the activities they’re doing. Also, ask users to think aloud and tell you how they feel as they go through the test, so that you know what the user feels when they do their tasks. If the user can do the scenarios flawlessly, it means the application is already intuitive, functional, and user friendly indeed.
After the test, the observer usually asks for feedbacks to the participant, so that we can improve our product and also we know how do they feel when they use our product. Like I said before, the response can be useful for our developer and design team so that we can make our product to be better. Do not forget to say thank you to the participant.
Post-UT
Create a test report
Review the participant’s responds or video footage and analyzed the data. Don’t forget to identify the design issues. Also, involve the whole team so that the team can discuss what kinds of design or features that must be improved to make the product better.
That is all for me. I hope this article will help you to conduct usability testing. Thank you!
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