Post on 27-Jan-2015
description
10 things you need to know about usability testing
Jana Sedivy
start testing right now
#1
What most people do
Oh well, too late to fix it now…
We’ll fix it in the next release!
What you should do
What an awesome product!
You can test with this
Fully functioning product
Or this
wireframes
Or even this!
Paper prototypes
My personal preferred combo
Balsamiq wireframes InVision App
+
(Total cost ~$100)
(to make it clickable)
How NOT to do a usability test
#2
Give a tour to a colleague
http://bit.ly/12KsLo2
“So, what do you think?”
http://bit.ly/19iHMxs
People will always ask for more stuff
They might not be your target user
Even though they don’t really want it
So who cares what they think?
You don’t want their opinion You want their data
Ask the right users
#3
Don’t ask his opinion
(Even if he’s very smart)
Your users should not be hard to find
#4
How to find users
+
1) Customers!
4)
5)
2) Friends and family
3) Visitors to your web site +
(sometimes)
Offer money
6-8 participants is great But you can get away with 4-5
The problems you will find
The problems you have resources to fix
Credit: Steve Krug
If you can’t find any users…
That might be a sign they don’t exist!
Define concrete tasks for users to complete and ask them to “think aloud”
#5
Bad
Good!
“What are your thoughts about this screen?”
“I’d like you to set up a conference call between John
Smith and Sanjiv Rashad”
Don’t expect users to just poke around
Tasks should
Represent features you are building in the current/next sprint
Be critical, frequent tasks
Test your assumptions
6-8 tasks is usually about right
Reverse task order between participants
“What are you looking for here?”
“Is that what you expected?”
Ask them to “think aloud” “where do you think you
would go to find this information?”
“Does this situation come up often for you?”
SHUT UP!
#6
2 ears 2 eyes
1 mouth
Use in those proportions!
Don’t listen to what users say
#7
Pay attention to what they do!
“I find this button confusing”
Did they find it? Then it wasn’t THAT confusing…
http://bit.ly/1atLJRr
Pay attention to what they do!
Did they succeed in the tasks? If not, it’s not easy to use.
http://bit.ly/11MeTmZ
“This is pretty easy to use!”
What they do tells you what they have problems with
http://bit.ly/11MeTmZ
What they say helps you understand why
Don’t let participants speak for others
#8
“What about you? Would you want to customize this?
Tell me about it.”
If you have the right people in your sessions they are qualified to speak for themselves.
Don’t explain why your system operates that way
#9
“Well, if we did it that way, the search would not be
scalable to tens of thousands of records.”
http://bit.ly/12dOBde
In the “real world”, users won’t have you there to explain it. So you had better understand how they see things.
“what the $*#&@!!?”
Remember, you are there to listen
If you keep telling participants why they are wrong, they will stop talking.
There will be some tough calls to make
It’s your job to consider the trade-offs afterwards.
Don’t write a report
#10
The people you are doing this for should be there, live. All the stakeholders should attend Product manager Designer Lead engineer Then discuss afterwards
Make the test results part of your process Put big issues into Jira / Wiki / Bugzilla
For smaller issues - have a bug called “Fix 80% of usability bugs”
Recommend: 2 hours every 6 weeks directly observing customers
http://www.uie.com/articles/user_exposure_hours/
The fastest path to great UX is regular exposure to your users.
Thank you!
jana@authenticInsight.com @janasedivy