(Table 1: Ponto J. Understanding and Evaluating Survey Research. J Adv Pract Oncol. 2015 Mar-Apr;6(2):168-71. Epub 2015 Mar 1. PMID: 26649250; PMCID: PMC4601897.)
Usability Testing
1. Identify what needs to be tested and why (a new product, feature, etc.)
2. Identify the target audience (your desired patron/customer). Create user personas to understand your target end-users groups.
3. Create a list of tasks that the user will have to go through (test plan)
4. Establish metrics. Metrics will help you evaluate the results of testing. Time on a task, success rate, goal fulfillment are just a few metrics that you can use for testing.
5. Recruit the right test participants. When recruiting test participants, consider both user demographics (age, where they live, income, etc.) as well as psychographics (personality, values, opinions, interests, and lifestyles).
6. Find a moderator. This person will give test participants a series of tasks that they must perform with the design and observes each participant’s actions and reactions.
7. Analyze the results of testing and prioritize the findings. Usability testing can provide a lot of insights, and it’s important to prioritize the findings according to their impact.
8. Discuss the insights with stakeholders.
9. Apply what you’ve learned. Introduce the required changes to your product design. Remember that usability testing is an iterative process and you will need to validate your design decisions with real users.
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Strive for consistency: Have standard icons, color schemes, and menu hierarchy to allow for simpler navigation and understanding.
Enable frequent users to use shortcuts: An example of this would be keyboard shortcuts in most Apple and Windows products.
Offer informative feedback: An example of this being handled badly would be an error message that is just a string of computer code. It is not providing the users with actionable or easily understandable feedback.
Design dialogue to yield closure: Make it clear where users are in the process. For example, a thank you message confirming an order has been placed.
Offer simple error handling: An example of this would be highlighting required boxes users have failed to fill in.
Permit easy reversal of actions: This allows users to explore more freely, and thus, become familiar with a website more quickly.
Support internal locus of control: Users need a sense of control, both for their comfort and convenience. For example, many sites allow users to toggle whether or not they want to receive notifications from the site.
Reduce short-term memory load: The rule of thumb is that people can remember “seven plus or minus two chunks” of information. It is easier to recognize information than recall it.
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