Usability Testing

Usability Testing
Monday, November 15, 2010

If your audience ﬁnds your
document difﬁcult to use, it
doesn’t mean that
they’ve failed.

It means that you failed them.

Creating usable
documents involves

Designing with end-users in mind

Companies are paying more and
more attention to their audiences.

Types of usability testing

•Focus Groups
•Contextual Inquiry
•Controlled Studies
•Follow-up Surveys

In a sense, you already did
this when you entered
the design phase of the
project.

Potential approaches to the task
Discuss...

Discuss...
Potential strengths of any given
approach or product

Discuss...
Potential problems of any possible
process / product

Discuss...
Goals for both process and
product

The purpose of a focus
group is to determine a
rough idea of what the
user’s needs are.

Once those needs have
been brought out, they
must be quantiﬁed in a
way that they can be
tested.

Now, on to the instructions...

Instructions should lead to a
completed task.

The task, from the user’s
perspective, should be
rewarding and satisfying.

Instructions are not satisfying if
people don’t understand them.

if they take too much
effort to follow.

It’s your job to make
sure things work and
are satisfying.

•Contextual Inquiry
•Controlled Observation

These documents are used
in varying contexts.

Ideally, testing is done in the context
the document will be used in.

(Obviously, that’s not possible in this class.)

• Most usability testing is done under
“lab” conditions where more factors
can be controlled and careful
observations can be made.
• This is the type of observation you
should do to improve your instructions.

The act of observing people
can’t help but affect the results.

Adopt a
participant / observer
stance.

The difference between strictly
observing a person navigating a
document or using a product
and participating in what they
do is signiﬁcant.

But it is also a matter of degree–
decide in advance just how much
you will interact with your test
subjects.

• Develop a “protocol” which you will
follow for observing your test subjects
• Take careful notes, or make recordings,
so that you can collate and report those
results.

•Silent observation
•Talk-aloud protocol
•Entrance/exit interviewing

Testing can be done without interaction
with the participant.

Observe and take notes on every action.

•A “protocol” is merely a sort of
shorthand for recording those
observations– a code that is easier
for you to write down.

• You might write “T” when the subject stops
reading and does not perform any action to
signify that they were thinking
• You might write “F” when the subject ﬂips
back and forth to locate something within
your instructions
• You might write “A” when the subject
performs the assembly.

To use this method, start a table
with the elapsed time in one
column and the action which occurs
in the other.

By carefully noting what the subject does at
each stage, you can locate the difﬁcult parts.

To use the “talk aloud”
protocol, instruct your user to
say out-loud what they are
thinking as they attempt to
follow your instructions.

(This is actually quite difﬁcult.)

• You must take careful notes or record
the subjects comments to provide an
adequate report of the ﬁndings.
• You cannot rely on your memory to
reconstruct this afterwards, especially
since you will be working with multiple
test-subjects.

It’s possible to use both approaches
at the same time.

you’ve got to have a plan.

Make sure you standardize your
method of noting your observations,
especially if more than one group
member is recording results.

• It is often useful to have some background
knowledge about your test subjects.
• You can prepare a questionnaire with
questions about their preferences such as
visual, verbal, or hands-on learning styles.
• This way you can better weight conﬂicting
needs of different users.

Exit polls, such as satisfaction
surveys, can give you overall
feedback on your document/
product.

Solid test results balance the
needs of all the users involved
to achieve more uniform results
in real world circumstances

Nobody produces a perfect product the ﬁrst time.

Difﬁculties don’t mean that you suck.

Test results tell you how to target revisions.

This project is designed to
give you experience in
getting better results.

• Facilitate error recognition and recovery
• Try to make it easier for a user to spot when
they have gone wrong
• Give them the means to recover from such
errors without feeling stupid

Design with users in mind.

• Set design goals
• Test those goals and reevaluate them
• Redesign your document and adjust the goals
accordingly
• Test again!

Your report should be
full of details.

•Details of your design goals
•Details of your testing procedure
including all iterations of the
product/design

Remember that the testing
phase is a signiﬁcant part of
your ﬁnal report on the
instructions project.

Usability Testing

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