Quantitative and evaluative method.
Usability is the ability to use a product with ease. When we talk about usability, we ensure that products are easy for everyone in any usage context. It should be evident to people where they are, what they are supposed to do next, and that they are able to complete the necessary task.
From the design perspective, we want our users to have a product that is easy to use without much thought and any frustrations.
This chapter goes into a lot of detail about user testing. To make it easier to implement best practices, we've created a template project in Productive. In the Design Phase board, there's a task list called Validation. Ping your TL to give you access to it.
Usability testing is a direct way of seeing how users interact with our product.
In usability testing, we show the clickable prototype to one user at a time (whether it's a mobile or web app), and we ask them to:
- figure out what it is
- try to use the prototype to do a typical task
- find some critical information
Usability Testing is crucial because it can help us learn if our product is really based on users' behaviors and expectations. This leads to many ideas for improving the design. We usually perform “task testing” — we ask the user to do complete a task, and then we observe how well they do.
We can divide usability testing into 3 phases:
- Setting up — planning and preparing everything we need for testing
- Conducting usability testing — moderated or unmoderated sessions with the users
- Analysis — provide actionable insight to the client and our team
The following paragraphs will guide you through each of these phases.
Setting up
- Follow the usual user research preparation steps
- Prepare tasks — After the client approves the agenda and after the responsibilities are assigned, the facilitator starts to prepare tasks and prototype(s). Be wary of the wording you're using on tasks; you don't want to give away the answer by mentioning the exact copy that is visible on the screen. For a more in-depth study of this process, take a look at NNG’s guide.
- Prepare your prototype for Useberry
- Prepare Useberry
Conducting usability testing
Before the official user sessions, it's crucial to conduct a test run to identify any smaller issues and possible improvements. The test run can be simulated in two settings based on the type of usability testing you're conducting: moderated and unmoderated.
Set up a prototype or version of the website/platform that users can interact with independently. Send the link to someone from Infinum just as you would to the research participant and tell them to provide feedback if anything was unclear, buggy or confusing.
We conduct test runs to identify and rectify any smaller issues or room for improvements before carrying out the actual testing.
Analysis
When you get all the data, review the rating table, Useberry's report, the observer's notes, and video recordings.
Build your report around these:
- Percentage of success for each task
- Ease of use for each task
- Pain points from your notes of participants thinking out loud
- First clicks or taps for each task
- General appeal of the app to participants
- Improvement suggestions based either on participants' direct ideas or your analysis of all of the above.
You can write your report as Pages/Word document or as a presentation document. You can find both templates 🔒 in this folder. If you follow the structure of these templates, you won't miss any significant part of the report, such as describing participants.
You'll be sending this report to the client, so try to write it in a plain language with no UX/UI lingo and lay down what improvement ideas result from the testing. That's what clients care about - how we'll use insights to make their product better.