SiteSell.com, E-business Success. Simple. Real. Design Meltdown 8 guidelines for usability testing (WebCredible) In professional web design circles, the usability testing session has become an essential component of any major project. Similar to focus groups in brand development and product launches, usability testing offers a rare opportunity to receive feedback from the very people the website is aimed at - before it's too late to do anything about it. But how can you get the most from these usability testing sessions? 1. Choosing your subjects As with any market research project, the results will only be as good as the people you test. 2. As with everything in life, first impressions are vital. Provide clear instructions on how to get to the usability testing location, and if necessary meet the participants at local stations. After the initial greeting and welcoming drinks, there are always legal forms that must be signed. 3. Before diving into key tasks, get the user familiar with the environment. Next, let them look at the website they are testing. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
blog software - open source - multiple blogs Netdiver digital culture magazine Usability Testing (Web Design & Usability) - Constance J Petersen Home Articles We've Written Usability Testing By Constance J. Help visitors navigate your Web site by removing stumbling blocks in advance. Shopping the other day on garden.com, I selected one item to purchase and continued browsing. I looked for a link labeled "check out," but there was no such link on the page. Obvious? Note: After this article was written, garden.com was acquired by Burpee seeds, and it now provides a standard shopping cart icon and text. I've noticed a strong new interest in usability testing, thanks to the growth of the Web. In its simplest form, usability testing requires only three ingredients: an application or Web site, a usability tester, and an observer. Note that usability testers are not the same as software testers whose job is to find bugs in the program. Be prepared Careful planning helps immensely in getting beneficial results from this kind of test. Five or six testers should be plenty if you plan carefully to ensure that they represent the user base.
inetUSA Treehouse Practical Usability Testing (Joshua Kaufman) The web professional's online magazine of choice. In: Columns > Information Architecture for the People By Joshua Kaufman Published on February 13, 2006 When I started this column, part of my motivation was to write about tools to empower Web designers—techniques they could take away and apply immediately. Usability testing should be an iterative practice, completed several times during the design and development life-cycle. The first article in this series is on one of my favorite practices: usability testing. Planning a Test The first thing to know about planning a usability test is that every test is different in scope, and results will vary a lot depending on the purpose and context of the test. No matter what the scope is, there are a several points that you should consider as early as possible: Test with a reasonable number of participants—at least five and no more than 20. What Are You Going to Test? Next, you need to decide what you’re going to test. Short. Legalities Questionnaires
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