This document discusses planning and conducting usability testing for a website. It addresses determining test goals and participants, identifying tasks to test, testing methodologies, analyzing results, and implementing fixes. Key points include:
- Testing 6-8 users to identify usability issues without testing too many.
- Conducting both exploratory and directed tasks to observe how users interact with and accomplish goals on the site.
- Using analytics tools before testing to understand user behavior and potential problem areas.
- Implementing the easiest fixes found before subsequent rounds of testing.
- Testing iteratively throughout development to catch and address issues early.
Usability testing can help bridge the gap between developers, marketers, and stakeholders. 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. Usability testing is a great way to help teams prioritize website redesign efforts. In this session, we'll talk about the main types of usability tests and why it's better to usability test before deciding on making changes to the design. By conducting tests early, your team learns what to change. You'll learn what to keep. Usability testing early makes it easier to build the requirements, define the use cases, and even create QA test scripts, because you can drive all those things right off what you saw in the research. It will likely reduce your development costs because you’ll have data to make decisions, instead of driving everything off some strong-willed individual’s opinions of what users need. Pushing your user research as early as possible in the schedule is the best way to get value from your efforts.
Live Conversation: Cut your customer interview costs by up to 90%UserTesting
Companies that use Live Conversation for customer interviews are finding out that they can achieve much more—and spend a lot less.
You'll learn:
- How to easily conduct interviews across the nation without ever leaving your office
- Cut your interview costs by up to 90%
- Reduce the time needed to schedule and recruit interviews by as much as 80%
Get more done for less money, and do it faster. In this webinar, Janelle Estes, UserTesting's VP of Solutions Consulting, will take you through the math and share real-world details on how you can calculate the savings for yourself. We’ll also share stories from customers using Live Conversation showing how it’s helping their businesses today, and give you their tips and tricks on how to get the most from the product.
Using Automated Testing Tools to Empower Your User ResearchUserZoom
In this Webinar, you'll learn:
-Guidelines for when to use moderated vs. unmoderated testing
-How to structure studies and set up tasks to get valid research results that achieve business objectives for testing
-Tried-and-true tricks for avoiding the most common pitfalls of unmoderated testing
-Advice for recruitment, screening and use of online panels
-How to use automated testing with agile design and development sprints to accommodate tight timelines and satisfy usability needs
Best Practices for Benchmarking the Website User Experience featuring Measuri...UserZoom
Stand-alone UX research generates a lot of data, but without a comparison to other benchmarks, you're often left wondering how your website stacks up in the real world. One of the best ways to put your task scenarios and metrics into context is to see how you compare against the competition.
To provide a meaningful comparison, UserZoom presents MeasuringU's Jeff Sauro, who will provide Best Practices for Benchmarking the Website User Experience.
View this UserZoom webinar on-demand and discover:
TOP solutions, tools and methodologies for Competitive UX Benchmarking
HOW to track the most important competitive metrics and stand out from the pack
PRACTICAL tips for Competitive UX Benchmarking you won't find anywhere else
Empowering Data-Driven Marketers: How UX Research & Usability Testing Can Pos...UserZoom
As a marketer, driving loyalty through each section of your customer funnel is imperative. In the modern world, we can attribute things like smarter spending decisions, more effective campaigns, and ultimately increased customer engagement to data-driven marketing. View this webinar with Jeff Sauro & learn more!
Usability testing can help bridge the gap between developers, marketers, and stakeholders. 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. Usability testing is a great way to help teams prioritize website redesign efforts. In this session, we'll talk about the main types of usability tests and why it's better to usability test before deciding on making changes to the design. By conducting tests early, your team learns what to change. You'll learn what to keep. Usability testing early makes it easier to build the requirements, define the use cases, and even create QA test scripts, because you can drive all those things right off what you saw in the research. It will likely reduce your development costs because you’ll have data to make decisions, instead of driving everything off some strong-willed individual’s opinions of what users need. Pushing your user research as early as possible in the schedule is the best way to get value from your efforts.
Live Conversation: Cut your customer interview costs by up to 90%UserTesting
Companies that use Live Conversation for customer interviews are finding out that they can achieve much more—and spend a lot less.
You'll learn:
- How to easily conduct interviews across the nation without ever leaving your office
- Cut your interview costs by up to 90%
- Reduce the time needed to schedule and recruit interviews by as much as 80%
Get more done for less money, and do it faster. In this webinar, Janelle Estes, UserTesting's VP of Solutions Consulting, will take you through the math and share real-world details on how you can calculate the savings for yourself. We’ll also share stories from customers using Live Conversation showing how it’s helping their businesses today, and give you their tips and tricks on how to get the most from the product.
Using Automated Testing Tools to Empower Your User ResearchUserZoom
In this Webinar, you'll learn:
-Guidelines for when to use moderated vs. unmoderated testing
-How to structure studies and set up tasks to get valid research results that achieve business objectives for testing
-Tried-and-true tricks for avoiding the most common pitfalls of unmoderated testing
-Advice for recruitment, screening and use of online panels
-How to use automated testing with agile design and development sprints to accommodate tight timelines and satisfy usability needs
Best Practices for Benchmarking the Website User Experience featuring Measuri...UserZoom
Stand-alone UX research generates a lot of data, but without a comparison to other benchmarks, you're often left wondering how your website stacks up in the real world. One of the best ways to put your task scenarios and metrics into context is to see how you compare against the competition.
To provide a meaningful comparison, UserZoom presents MeasuringU's Jeff Sauro, who will provide Best Practices for Benchmarking the Website User Experience.
View this UserZoom webinar on-demand and discover:
TOP solutions, tools and methodologies for Competitive UX Benchmarking
HOW to track the most important competitive metrics and stand out from the pack
PRACTICAL tips for Competitive UX Benchmarking you won't find anywhere else
Empowering Data-Driven Marketers: How UX Research & Usability Testing Can Pos...UserZoom
As a marketer, driving loyalty through each section of your customer funnel is imperative. In the modern world, we can attribute things like smarter spending decisions, more effective campaigns, and ultimately increased customer engagement to data-driven marketing. View this webinar with Jeff Sauro & learn more!
Reduce Product Failures While Boosting Conversion RatesUserZoom
What would a 5% improvement in your website’s conversion rates make to your bottom line? If you’re not doing regular usability testing, then you’re probably leaving at least that value on the table. Join Peter Hughes in this free webinar sponsored by UserZoom and UXPA to find out how you can reduce product failures while boosting conversion rates.
Slides talk about complete process of usability testing, extensively discusses usability components, phases of usability testing process and significance of designing with empathy
Moderated vs Unmoderated Research: It’s time to say ELMO (Enough, let’s move ...UserZoom
Does this sound familiar? Researchers sitting around a meeting table arguing about which methods to use, especially when it comes to unmoderated remote testing vs moderated? Usually without any empirical data?
In this webinar we'll give you the power of data to say "ELMO!" (Enough, let’s move on!) and end the argument once and for all.
We collected this data by conducting 10 moderated and 10 unmoderated remote sessions across six tasks on Patagonia.com, in order to show how moderated and unmoderated remote studies compare in terms of the number and severity of usability issues surfaced.
Register for this upcoming webinar and discover the theoretical and actual strengths and weaknesses of various user research methods to stop the argument before it even begins.
Webinar - Skin in the Game: Getting Stakeholders Involved In Your UX ResearchUserZoom
View this webinar and discover who are your stakeholders?, Value of stakeholder involvement, Two audiences: your users and your stakeholders, Fitting stakeholders into each research phase, Assessing how well it’s working
This usability testing guide presents a seven step process to get the most out of UX research. Following the details provided will help insure a successful effort and solid ROI for your market research, UX design, mobile app or software development team.
UXPA DC Redux 2013 Notetaker Perspective 10-25-2013.pptUserWorks
Kristen Davis and Dick Horst from UserWorks presentation slides on the "Notetaker's Perspective During Usability Testing: Recognizing What's Important, What's Not" from UXPA-DC Conference Redux 2013
TestHive sahipliğinde gerçekleşen Usability Testing Workshop etkinliğinde kullanıcı deneyimi ve kullanılabilirlik testi üzerine genel bir teorik bilgiye sahip olduk. Sonrasında, card sorting, tree testing, usability testing planlama, usability testing ve usability testing raporlama workshopu yaptık.
Genel olarak şu konulardan bahsettik:
Kullanıcı deneyimi ve kullanıcı alışkanlıkları
Do's and don'ts
Test etikleri
Teste hazırlanma
Senaryo seçimi
Test sonucunu raporlama
Test sonucunu yorumlama
Esra Yalman
Experience Design Consultant at ThoughtWorks
How to Conduct UX Benchmarking Studies Your Own Site Over Time + Competitors ...UserZoom
In this webinar on-demand, Ann Rochanayon, Director of UX/CX Research at UserZoom, will guide you on how to measure and manage the user experience by outlining the essential elements of successful UX Benchmarking.
Human-Computer Interaction and agile practices in software
engineering are not two separate domains, but rather agile is a work principle that is applied in software development, of which user interface design represents a significant part. Agile projects could require such an approach, which typically iterates on the user interface using low-fidelity prototypes. This paper motivates, presents, and assess capabilities of a software for collaborative sketching of user interfaces on multiple surfaces of interaction, ranging from mobile phones to wall screens. We proposes a Collaborative User Centered Design (CUCD) method for user interface prototyping to supporting cross-surface collaboration by sketching, enabling fast, flexible, intuitive and reusable prototype.
Evolving The Impact of Usability Testing: Supporting New Roles & Business Me...UserZoom
As usability testing has become a critical step in building excellent user experiences, more roles are involved in testing and extracting outcomes. Teams have higher demands for collaborative testing and to assure conclusions are directly impacting business metrics in a positive way. In this session hear the story about how UserZoom has collaborated with its customers to redesign its own UX to support these evolving needs.
Reduce Product Failures While Boosting Conversion RatesUserZoom
What would a 5% improvement in your website’s conversion rates make to your bottom line? If you’re not doing regular usability testing, then you’re probably leaving at least that value on the table. Join Peter Hughes in this free webinar sponsored by UserZoom and UXPA to find out how you can reduce product failures while boosting conversion rates.
Slides talk about complete process of usability testing, extensively discusses usability components, phases of usability testing process and significance of designing with empathy
Moderated vs Unmoderated Research: It’s time to say ELMO (Enough, let’s move ...UserZoom
Does this sound familiar? Researchers sitting around a meeting table arguing about which methods to use, especially when it comes to unmoderated remote testing vs moderated? Usually without any empirical data?
In this webinar we'll give you the power of data to say "ELMO!" (Enough, let’s move on!) and end the argument once and for all.
We collected this data by conducting 10 moderated and 10 unmoderated remote sessions across six tasks on Patagonia.com, in order to show how moderated and unmoderated remote studies compare in terms of the number and severity of usability issues surfaced.
Register for this upcoming webinar and discover the theoretical and actual strengths and weaknesses of various user research methods to stop the argument before it even begins.
Webinar - Skin in the Game: Getting Stakeholders Involved In Your UX ResearchUserZoom
View this webinar and discover who are your stakeholders?, Value of stakeholder involvement, Two audiences: your users and your stakeholders, Fitting stakeholders into each research phase, Assessing how well it’s working
This usability testing guide presents a seven step process to get the most out of UX research. Following the details provided will help insure a successful effort and solid ROI for your market research, UX design, mobile app or software development team.
UXPA DC Redux 2013 Notetaker Perspective 10-25-2013.pptUserWorks
Kristen Davis and Dick Horst from UserWorks presentation slides on the "Notetaker's Perspective During Usability Testing: Recognizing What's Important, What's Not" from UXPA-DC Conference Redux 2013
TestHive sahipliğinde gerçekleşen Usability Testing Workshop etkinliğinde kullanıcı deneyimi ve kullanılabilirlik testi üzerine genel bir teorik bilgiye sahip olduk. Sonrasında, card sorting, tree testing, usability testing planlama, usability testing ve usability testing raporlama workshopu yaptık.
Genel olarak şu konulardan bahsettik:
Kullanıcı deneyimi ve kullanıcı alışkanlıkları
Do's and don'ts
Test etikleri
Teste hazırlanma
Senaryo seçimi
Test sonucunu raporlama
Test sonucunu yorumlama
Esra Yalman
Experience Design Consultant at ThoughtWorks
How to Conduct UX Benchmarking Studies Your Own Site Over Time + Competitors ...UserZoom
In this webinar on-demand, Ann Rochanayon, Director of UX/CX Research at UserZoom, will guide you on how to measure and manage the user experience by outlining the essential elements of successful UX Benchmarking.
Human-Computer Interaction and agile practices in software
engineering are not two separate domains, but rather agile is a work principle that is applied in software development, of which user interface design represents a significant part. Agile projects could require such an approach, which typically iterates on the user interface using low-fidelity prototypes. This paper motivates, presents, and assess capabilities of a software for collaborative sketching of user interfaces on multiple surfaces of interaction, ranging from mobile phones to wall screens. We proposes a Collaborative User Centered Design (CUCD) method for user interface prototyping to supporting cross-surface collaboration by sketching, enabling fast, flexible, intuitive and reusable prototype.
Evolving The Impact of Usability Testing: Supporting New Roles & Business Me...UserZoom
As usability testing has become a critical step in building excellent user experiences, more roles are involved in testing and extracting outcomes. Teams have higher demands for collaborative testing and to assure conclusions are directly impacting business metrics in a positive way. In this session hear the story about how UserZoom has collaborated with its customers to redesign its own UX to support these evolving needs.
World Usability Day 2016 in Antwerp (Belgium), Thursday, November 10th - Jan Moons, UX expert and co-founder at UXprobe
"Hands on with Lean and Agile User Testing"
Jan Moons shows how to use the latest tools to easily integrate user testing into a lean process. Discover how user testing can be the answer for problems of conversion, usability, and UX quality. In the workshop you will explore all sides of user testing (be the user, be the moderator, be the client) and you will see how lean and agile user testing can be.
Jan is the co-founder of UXprobe, company that is focused on a mission of helping companies build great digital products that deliver a fantastic user experience. Jan has almost 20 years of experience as a software engineer and is a certified usability designer.
The agency's guide to effective user researchUserTesting
Aiden Bordner, co-founder and Principal Designer at Parade, an experience design firm, draws upon over six years of research experience with clients to discuss some of the tools and processes he’s found to make this process easier. From allocating and protecting budget, to lean research techniques, to setting expectations and reducing client anxiety about test day, these tools will help you work research into more project plans and run successful studies that provide valuable design insights.
The goal of this presentation is to give attendees a deeper understanding of usability testing so they can leverage it in their own work. The material will shed light on what is important to the research buyer and will help the research provider to better understand how to plan, moderate, and report on a usability study. It will also provide information on where they can go to learn more about this very practical qualitative method.
Kay will cover what a usability test is and when to use it, the key planning steps, the language around it, and the unique insights this method produces. She will also discuss the various approaches a market researcher can take when running a usability study at different points in a product’s development (e.g., concept, early prototype, released product).
What is Lean UX? Come get introduced to the topic of Lean UX and learn the fundamentals of this approach, and how it is revolutionizing the field of UX with UserTesting. Discover how constant iterating through cycles and learning from each cycle can create products which can overcome business challenges and meet customer needs, while saving big bucks, resources, and time.
We will cover the basic principles of Lean UX, and how UserTesting fits into this model of research.
5 Things You Can Do Starting Today to Improve Your Product's User Experience ...Catharine Robertson
Commit to user research. Value user test data over design trends. Perform card sorting with your users. Do usability testing on your product for at least 2 hours every 6 weeks.
How do you plan a successful UX project?
You need to include activities to answer each of
the following questions:
1. What are the business requirements?
2. What are the user requirements?
3. What is the best design solution that meets
both the business and user requirements?
A comprehensive guide on advantages, methods, and process of Usability Testin...Calidad Infotech
Any website that is user-friendly, rich in features, has desired products and services, relevant information, and loads the site pages faster, has all the best chances in the universe to make visitors stay for longer on the site. If you go to any website such as Amazon, eBay, Myntra, and Snapdeal, you can seamlessly surf… Continue reading A comprehensive guide on advantages, methods, and process of Usability Testing
September is a time of the year when a lot of people return to education. For adults, returning to education is incredibly admirable but it's also quite challenging. I've created this short video to introduce three principles and three tactics of learning that if applied, will help people have a far more enjoyable and successful learning journey. I wish you success.
In Summer 2020 I went to Colombia on honeymoon. On the last day I had a cycling accident and spent the next two months in hospital in Colombia and several more months convalescing at home. This is a collection of some of the pictures that remind me of the story.
Clifton Strengths themes represent how an individual is uniquely talented.
Clifton Strengths provide useful analysis to understand a persons strengths as well as the kind of environments where they can excel.
This is the unique list of strengths of Sean Donnelly. Read them to understand his strengths and also his blind spots, which is aware of and working on!
This is a short presentation that I made at 10X Day 2020 in Dublin. This deck covers key processes required to learn effectively in the 21st century. After all, learning is the main skill that all professionals must possess. In the words of Alvin Tofler, "the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn".
What is User Experience Design?
The Business Case for User Experience Design
What are the UX processes?
How can we measure its effectiveness?
Who needs to be involved?
Between Filth and Fortune- Urban Cattle Foraging Realities by Devi S Nair, An...Mansi Shah
This study examines cattle rearing in urban and rural settings, focusing on milk production and consumption. By exploring a case in Ahmedabad, it highlights the challenges and processes in dairy farming across different environments, emphasising the need for sustainable practices and the essential role of milk in daily consumption.
Book Formatting: Quality Control Checks for DesignersConfidence Ago
This presentation was made to help designers who work in publishing houses or format books for printing ensure quality.
Quality control is vital to every industry. This is why every department in a company need create a method they use in ensuring quality. This, perhaps, will not only improve the quality of products and bring errors to the barest minimum, but take it to a near perfect finish.
It is beyond a moot point that a good book will somewhat be judged by its cover, but the content of the book remains king. No matter how beautiful the cover, if the quality of writing or presentation is off, that will be a reason for readers not to come back to the book or recommend it.
So, this presentation points designers to some important things that may be missed by an editor that they could eventually discover and call the attention of the editor.
Expert Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Drafting ServicesResDraft
Whether you’re looking to create a guest house, a rental unit, or a private retreat, our experienced team will design a space that complements your existing home and maximizes your investment. We provide personalized, comprehensive expert accessory dwelling unit (ADU)drafting solutions tailored to your needs, ensuring a seamless process from concept to completion.
Can AI do good? at 'offtheCanvas' India HCI preludeAlan Dix
Invited talk at 'offtheCanvas' IndiaHCI prelude, 29th June 2024.
https://www.alandix.com/academic/talks/offtheCanvas-IndiaHCI2024/
The world is being changed fundamentally by AI and we are constantly faced with newspaper headlines about its harmful effects. However, there is also the potential to both ameliorate theses harms and use the new abilities of AI to transform society for the good. Can you make the difference?
1. Initial thoughts / observations
• What is the goal of testing?
– Test personas
• New person in a company joining the sub
• Prospect
• Manager who owns a sub
– What to test?
• Exploratory tests? E.g., Homepage e.g., click paths etc. Followed by survey questions e.g.,
open ended questions re satisfaction, ease etc.
• Directed tests i.e., Specific tasks e.g., locate reports, sign up for roundtables, access online
classroom etc. e.g., find the SEO best practice guide
• What can we learn from Google Analytics before we proceed? Can we use Google Analytics to examine
where the user journey might be broken?
• Underlying issue: What is Econ? Is it a publisher? A consultancy? An elearning business? How do we
design to cover the various strands of the business? I.e., what are the priorities of the site?
• Is there budget and resource available to make changes to the website based on learnings from usability
testing?
• Who will take ownership of testing? This will need an owner who has a understanding of how to plan and
implement user research studies and have a balanced view of what's best for the user and business.
• Is there already a list of issues to address? Should these be completed before testing? I understand that
there’ is still some work to introduce some elements and clearly marked CTAs to subscribe.
• Option of an Expert Review?
2. Usability testing 101
1. Test participants complete typical tasks while
observers watch, listen and take notes
2. Goal:
1. Identify usability problems
2. Determine participants satisfaction with the site
3. Usability test cycle
Start the test
Identify 6 – 8
users to test
Observe test
participants
performing task
Identify 2 – 3
easiest things to
fix
Make changes
to the site
4. Steps for Usability Testing
1. Plan user tests
2. Conduct user tests
3. Analyse findings
4. Modify website
5. Retest
5. Test Methodology
Test objectives
Prepare a user profile
Identify 6 – 9 users
Design the test
Include relevant tasks
Prepare a script of letting the test participant know what to expect
Consider how tasks can be measured and evaluated (not just questionnaires)
Who will facilitate / observe?
Who will analyse?
Who will prepare the report and recommendations?
Decide what to fix
6. Test Methodology – 2 Approaches
• Test objectives
• User profile
• 6 – 9 users
• 2 day process
• Test design
• Task list
• Test environment
• Observer
• Evaluation measures
• Report with exhaustive list of
recommendations
• Test objective
• Test 3 – 4 users at a time
• Recruit loosely
• Quick debrief
• Decide what to fix before next round
of testing
• > “Get it” testing is just what it
sounds like: show them the site, and
see if they get it—do they
understand the purpose of the site,
the value proposition, how it’s
organized, how it works, and so on.
• > Key task testing means asking the
user to do something, then watching
how well they do.
7. Testing Formats
1. Paper prototype
2. Competitors site
3. Live site
i. Observation
ii. Remote observation
testing
iii. Remote unmoderated
testing
8. When to test
• Test early and test often
– Danger: Web Development teams don’t like
usability testing so keep it simple for them.
– Build it into operational activities
– Once per month during development
• Gives you what you need
• Frees from deciding when to test
• Short bursts
• Identify problems before they get hard coded
10. How many users to test
• Depends on the objective of the test
– Are you trying to prove something?
– Are you trying to identify all problems?
11. How many users to test
• During
development
• Iterative
Output:
• Usability problems
and suggested fixes
• Highlight videos
• Formative testing • Summative testing
• Post development
• Compare against
competitors
• Generate date to support
marketing claims about
usability
Output:
• Statistical measures of
usability
• Reports or white papers
12. How many users to test
Source: Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug
13. • 6 – 8 users is a valid sample
• Little ROI in testing more than 9 users
14. At least 20 users for quantitative studies
Source: Jakob Nielsen
16. Where to test
• Informal moderated
testing:
– Moderator / Note taker
– Participant
– One to one
– Tasks
• Remote moderated
testing:
– Moderator / note taker
• Web conference tool for
screen sharing
• Screen recorder
• Speakerphone
– Participant
• High speed Internet
access
• Speakerphone / headset
Lab not required
Source: Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug
17. What to test
• Understand requirements
– What do users want to accomplish?
– What does the company want to accomplish?
• Determine the goals
– What is the objective of the website?
• Decide on the area of focus
– Critical tasks:
Test the tasks that have the biggest impact on the
site
18. Task types
1. First impression - What is your impression of this home page or
application?
2. Exploratory task - Open ended
3. Directed task- Specific / results oriented
25. Metrics
• Task completion rate
• Errors
• Efficiency: Number of steps / clicks required to
complete the task
• Self reported metrics
– Likert scale
– A or B etc.
26. Some testing guidelines
• Run a pilot test
• Put participants at ease
• Do the test yourself
• Let participants know that they can abandon
tasks
• Don’t prompt participants
• Record tests in as much detail as possible
• Be sensitive to the fact that developers / business
owners may be upset by the findings
32. Testing Tools - Morae
• Prepare usability test – Morae Recorder
• Conduct usability test – Morae Recorder
– Unmoderated tests
– “Think Aloud” Protocol
– Survey design
– Survey response
• Collect and analyse results – Morae Manager
– Gather survey responses
– Review recordings for issues
– Make notes on observed issues
– Identify issues that developers or even a userinterface
expert may have missed first hand
33. Wrap Up – Some Basic Principles
• Design guidelines and usability test results
inform how we should design
• Usability is central to the business model
• The usability process is intended to gain
information about the user’s experience, not
the experience of the development team /
CEO / Marketing Manager etc.
• You don’t need a usability lab to conduct
usability tests
34. Don’t forget Google Analytics
How do users browse your site? Use Flow Visualizations to track the path that a
customer takes through your website.
Find out time on site and with which content audience interacts the most.
Identify how users enter your site and how they leave. The homepage that you
assign may not be the homepage that user uses.
Identify drop off points and reduce bounce rate.
Have a clear idea of user tablet, desktop and mobile screen resolutions with the
goal of optimising content to those dimensions.
35. Further reading
• www.usability.gov
• Morae tutorials:
http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-morae-
current.html
• Books:
– Steve Krug, Rocket Science Made Easy
– Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think
– Eric Reiss, Usable Usability
– Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, The Practice
of Simplicity
37. But…
SUS does not diagnose usability problems:
Users may encounter problems, even severe ones and still provide SUS scores
that seem high
Requirement to review recordings
Build in extra questions to determine user satisfaction and thoughts
Editor's Notes
Testing only three or four users also makes it possible to test and debrief in the same day, so you can take advantage of what you’ve learned right away. Also, when you test more than four at a time, you usually end up with more notes than anyone has time to process—many of them about things that are really “nits,” which can actually make it harder to see the forest for the trees.
Before you even begin designing your site, you should be testing comparable sites. They may be actual competitors, or they may be sites that are similar in style, organization, or features to what you have in mind.
Use them yourself, then watch one or two other people use them and see what works and what doesn’t. Many people overlook this step, but it’s invaluable—like having someone build a working prototype for you for free.
The key is to start testing early (it’s really never too early) and test often, at each phase of Web development.
Before you even begin designing your site, you should be testing comparable sites. They may be actual competitors, or they may be sites that are similar in style, organization, or features to what you have in mind.
Use them yourself, then watch one or two other people use them and see what works and what doesn’t. Many people overlook this step, but it’s invaluable—like having someone build a working prototype for you for free.
If you’ve never conducted a test before testing comparable sites, it will give you a pressure-free chance to get the hang of it. It will also give you a chance to develop a thick skin. The first few times you test your own site, it’s hard not to take it personally when people don’t get it. Testing someone else’s site first will help you see how people react to sites and give you a chance to get used to it. Since the comparable sites are “live,” you can do two kinds of testing: “Get it” testing and key tasks.
> “Get it” testing is just what it sounds like: show them the site, and see if they get it—do they understand the purpose of the site, the value proposition, how it’s organized, how it works, and so on.
> Key task testing means asking the user to do something, then watching how well they do.
User-experience studies help site owners to identify underperforming areas on their websites in order to make improvements to the user experience. This should have the effect of improving your business in various ways...
Depends on the type of test. Summative versus FormativeThe purpose of testing isn’t to prove anything.
You don’t need to fix all problems.
The first three users are very likely to encounter nearly all of the most significant problems,2 and it’s much more important to do more rounds of testing than to wring everything you can out of each round. Testing only three users helps ensure that you will do another round soon.3
Also, since you will have fixed the problems you uncovered in the first round, in the next round it’s likely that all three users will uncover a new set of problems, since they won’t be getting stuck on the first set of problems.
1. The first three users are very likely to encounter nearly all of the most significant problems2. and it’s much more important to do more rounds of testing than to wring everything you can out of each round. Testing only three users helps ensure that you will do another round soon.3. Also, since you will have fixed the problems you uncovered in the first round, in the next round it’s likely that all three users will uncover a new set of problems, since they won’t be getting stuck on the first set of problems.
In the beginning, though, usability testing was a very expensive proposition. You had to have a usability lab with an observation room behind a one-way mirror, and at least two video cameras so you could record the users’ reactions and the thing they were using. You had to recruit a lot of people so you could get results.
Hawthorne Effect (observer effect): is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. This can undermine the integrity of research, particularly the relationships between variables.
What you want to do is sit back, zip your mouth shut, put your hands behind your back and watch someone unassisted as they go through your website.
It's very hard and it is also extremely interesting. What is usability testing and how does it differ from other methods of research? It's a one or two day process with at least 4-8 participants per day. You want to take an hour per session and you have already gone through your site, remember you can't test everything on your site. You are going to have some predetermined tasks that you are going to lay out in advance and you have a test facilitator, hopefully someone that has experience in moderating, understanding how people are using the site and they're taking notes and sometimes it's videotaped, but not always, sometimes you have other people that are observing in the room.
It's really one-on-one watching and learning. So you are taking a look at how someone is using your website, you're not actually showing them. How many of you have designed a website and sat with someone down in front of it and asked them what they thought? And they start to point around you and say no, no, no, don't go there! Oh! No, no, that's not active and you eventually take the mouse over and show them the cool stuff yourself. That is the antithesis of usability testing.
• For all but the simplest and most informal tests, run a pilot test first.
• Ensure participants are put at ease, and are fully informed of any taping or observation.
Attend at least one test as a participant, to appreciate the stress that participants undergo.
• Ensure that participants have the option to abandon any tasks which they are unable to
complete.
• Do not prompt participants unless it is clearly necessary to do so.
• Record events in as much detail as possible— to the level of keystrokes and mouse clicks if
necessary.
• If there are observers, ensure that they do not interrupt in any way. Brief observers formally prior to the test.
• Be sensitive to the fact that developers may be upset by what they observe or what you report.
Crazy Egg is an online application that provides you with eye tracking tools such as Heat map, Scroll map, Overlay, and Confetti to track a website's operation. This helps you to understand your customers' interests so you can boost the profit from your website.
SUS is the most widely used standard questionnaire for measuring the perception of usability.
The SUS survey is a ‘quick and dirty’ benchmark of usability, created by John Brook in 1986 and has become an industry standard with references in over 600 publications (Sauro, 2011). Brook’s usability scale scores from zero to 100 but is not interpreted as a percentage score. Rather, the average benchmark score is 68 and anything below this is considered below average in usability terms.
First developed in 1986, it has been used on software, websites, mobile phones and hardware etc.
Some of the key benefits of SUS are:
Provides a measure of a user’s view of the usability of a system
Relatively easy to interpret
Easy to communicate (because of its 0-100 scale)
SUS allows developers to compare different beta websites to see which scores better.
Reliable. SUS has been shown to be more reliable and detect differences at smaller sample sizes than home-grown questionnaires and other commercially available ones. Sample size and reliability are unrelated, so SUS can be used on very small sample sizes (as few as two users) and still generate reliable results.
SUS also correlates highly with other questionnaire-based measurements of usability (called concurrent validity).
At only 10 items, SUS may be quick to administer and score, but data from over 5000 users and almost 500 different studies suggests that SUS is far from dirty. Its versatility, brevity and wide-usage means that despite inevitable changes in technology, we can probably count on SUS being around for at least another 25 years.
SUS was not intended to diagnose usability problems. In its original use, SUS was administered after a usability test where all user-sessions were recorded on videotape (VHS and Betamax). Low SUS scores indicated to the researchers that they needed to review the tape and identify problems encountered with the interface.