Usability Testing

As per http://www.usabilitytesting.gov, 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.

Benefits of 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.  During a usability test, you will:

• Learn if participants are able to complete specified tasks successfully
• Identify how long it takes to complete specified tasks
• Find out how satisfied participants are with your Web site or other product
• Identify changes required to improve user performance and satisfaction
• And analyze the performance to see if it meets your usability objectives

Now according to me, doing usability testing is an important part of getting feedback, that we need from user to make the product or service or website better. We need to do some preparation for this activity. Our preparation should involve creating tasks that are not leading to direct answers. Users need to understand these tasks and able to either successfully complete those tasks or we need to record the struggle if user have in completing the tasks. Worse case scenario is that user may not able to complete the task and we need to make it incomplete.

Those tasks that are marked incomplete or where user struggles needs to be improved upon! It is our opportunity to improve upon the user experience for those tasks. There are many types of Usability testings like moderated usability testing and unmoderated usability testing which we would cover in detail on my next post. Stay tuned!

Author Bio: Shalu Chawla is a trained Quality Assurance professional who writes about Quality Assurance and testing with the sole purpose of sharing information from her knowledge or by referring to other good sites. You can know more about her by clicking on www.shaluchawla.com or www.shaluchawla.me. You can also visit me in my other website on wellness by clicking on https://shalu-chawla.org/ if interested in meditation or https://shalu-chawla.net/ if interested in travel topics.