Five Thoughts of Usability Testing in Singapore
Usability testing is a method used to evaluate a product or system. This method originates from classical experimental science, allows for complex, large sample testing, and simple qualitative sample testing.
These thoughts will be divided into five points: (1) pre-test; (2) Invite stakeholders to participate as much as possible; (3) adjust scripts in time; (4) prioritize usability issues; (5). Among them, (1) and (2) are preparations before usability test, (3) we need to pay attention to usability test, and (4) and (5) need caution after usability test ends. The following will be in accordance with the usability test before, during, and after an overview.
Usability testing before
Pre-test
The pre-test is a mock test scheduled prior to the formal usability test. The main purpose of pre-test is to ensure that the test hardware and software are running properly, the script is clear, the task is feasible, the design of the interview questions are reasonable and clear. If you encounter these problems, to make timely adjustments and changes so that you can avoid some invalid tests or errors that may occur, thus reducing the cost of time.
Pretest can find colleagues, but this colleague cannot participate in product development and design of related personnel, you can consider the administration, logistics and other non-product related personnel after the test and interview can give some gifts or eat a meal.
Invite relevant parties to participate as much as possible
Product-related personnel may include but are not limited to, designers, product managers, research and development, operations, and more. Before conducting the usability test, we will try our best to inform the relevant parties of the time and place of testing beforehand and invite relevant parties to participate in the on-site observation.
Inviting interested parties to participate in the scene is mutually beneficial and win-win: For research, this is one of the ways that the research report can finally be understood and approved by relevant parties, which is also conducive to using the research follow-up work. For the parties involved, understandably, more inspiration may be gained by observing from the test the behaviour or attitude the host did not notice.
Due to the different companies, projects and needs, the people invited are different. What needs to be clarified here is to invite suitable people to observe the test on the spot. For example, my previous project was originally an interactive designer who wanted to examine each function point and page layout of a page. Finally, 3 interactive designers were invited, of course, The product manager and R & D staff for this page can be invited. If the interested party is really interested, but temporarily for some reason cannot come, you can use some commercial software for remote recording and playback sharing.
Usability testing
Timely adjust the script
After the usability test is done several times, you may find that some of the issues that we think are important may not be as important as some that we think are less important than necessary. Or found the user for a broader question puzzled. Or find some common trends among users and hope to understand this trend. At this time, we should adjust the script in time, add or cut some of the content, rather than continue to follow the original script.
Qualitative research is exploratory research, the purpose is to build the theory, with the testing and interviews, will produce some new ideas, the theoretical framework will be built more clear, then you need to be fine on the original script.
If possible, we can adjust the script for each usability test done, which may be relatively tiring but may give us more information.
After usability testing
Prioritize usability issues
After testing, you will find a series of usability problems. Ideally, every problem should be solved before the product goes online. However, this is unrealistic. After all, which problems should be solved first and what problems should be solved later? At this time, these problems need to be prioritized, so as to reasonably arrange the order of iteration and development.
There are a lot of different evaluation indexes and grading standards in the world about the priority of usability problems. This article is no longer exhaustive. Refer to my previous article [Priority Evaluation of Usability Problems]. What I want to say here is that none of the models are generic and we need to find the model that best suits our own product, and of course the metrics or ratings can be modified as needed.
It should be noted that the prioritization of questions from usability testing is the result given by the researcher based on the user’s testing. This order of precedence is not the actual order of precedence for product development. First of all, the user awareness of the product and product-related personnel to recognize the product there is certainly some difference. Second, the solution to these problems also need to consider the design cycle, development cycle, business costs and so on. Therefore, research should work with the product team to understand the importance of these issues from the user’s point of view, and then the relevant staff to determine the actual priority ranking.
Pay attention to the user’s positive comments
Usability testing measures some of the product or system issues, but if a usability testing report is a problem throughout, you can imagine that the product stakeholders or stakeholders are emotionally unhappy and think hard bitterly done, nothing is approved.
In usability testing, we also need to note down when a user refers to one or more of the product’s benefits, and in subsequent reports mention, especially some of the benefits mentioned multiple times. The benefits of doing so are two folds: First, there is no psychological setback for the recipients of the reports – product stakeholders – and a sense of neutrality (both weaknesses and weaknesses) will be conducive to use research follow-up cooperation and communication. Second, it raises the importance of these meritations mentioned many times, lest they be lost in subsequent iterative versions.
Have seen different people in the internship usability test report, each person to do the report is different, it can be said that the report usability test results are no the absolutely correct absolute standard method, it is important to choose a way to promptly notify the relevant personnel present the report.
Above are five points in the recent projects in my insights. I hope they would be helpful.
Usability testing is inevitable and necessary if you want to make the user experience better.
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