What? Usability Testing? Do We even need That?
Do you know the news about Instagram suddenly change their layout, like moving the notification button to near direct message button and add shopping button at previously where notification located? Many people think this is quite sudden and some of them even do not update their Instagram. I think this is one of backlashed of not doing some usability testing first.
But what is Usability Testing? Why is it important? Do we need it?
Usability Testing by Definition
Usability testing refers to evaluating a product or service by testing it with representative users. During the 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.
Why people do Usability Testing?
Usability testing lets the design and development teams identify problems before they are coded. The earlier issues are identified and fixed, the less expensive the fixes will be in terms of both staff time and possible impact to the schedule.
The goals of usability testing vary by study, but they usually include:
- Identifying problems in the design of the product or service
- Uncovering opportunities to improve
- Learning about the target user’s behavior and preferences
Usability Testing for BisaGo App
Planning
Before conducting the actual usability testing, we need to make some scenarios. What is scenario? They are something what you want from the user to do. When designing one, we need to make sure our scenario is simple, clear, and can be understand by the user. For example, this is an example of scenario.
Getting the Participants
Now that you have some scenarios, we need some participants for conducting the usability testing. When searching for one, the participants must be a potential user of our app. For BisaGo, the potential user are person with disabilities. But since COVID, it’s very hard to get one. So for this, the parents of development team become the participants.
Most Usability Testing is based on quality-based, so we just need at most 5 participants. If it is based on quantity-based, maybe we can need more. But for BisaGo, we chose quality-based.
Conducting the Usability Testing
Finally, we can begin the Usability Testing. Before you start asking the participants, do some introductions first and make the participants comfortable with you. To get them to loosen up, ask them some friendly conversational questions
Give them the scenarios you just made. Make sure they understand what they are supposed to do. During the testing, the subject may confused and ask you some questions. Do not answer any questions from them, instead just ask them back and make it open-ended question.
While they are do their scenarios, we must take notes everything about the subject during the testing. This is an example result of it.
Follow-up Questions and Wrap Up
Reserve some time at the end of the session to ask any follow-up questions and collect the participant’s final feedback. Be sure to thank them for their help. This is an example of follow-up questions and the subject answers.
That is all from me. I hope it will be useful. Well then, cheers~
— A certain person who feels sad at the death scene of his favorite heroine
