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Usability Test Moderation: The Comic

1 June 2009 - If you've been tasked with running a usability test, then you'll love this instructional guide. Aimed at people about to moderate their first usability test, this free graphic instruction guide covers the essential techniques you'll need to moderate a usability test.

User Experience Research articles & resources

Usability Test Moderation: The Comic

1 June 2009 - If you've been tasked with running a usability test, then you'll love this instructional guide. Aimed at people about to moderate their first usability test, this free graphic instruction guide covers the essential techniques you'll need to moderate a usability test.

What every usability test moderator ought to know about good listening

6 May 2009 - Moderation seems effortless but there's a lot more to good listening than opening your ears. Here are 15 suggestions to improve your own listening skills.

New standards in usability

13 Jan 2009 - 2008 saw the release of several international usability standards, many within the influential ISO 9241 series. Two of these standards focus on accessibility and another provides guidelines for usable web sites. This article explains why usability standards are important and summarises the 13 new parts of ISO 9241.

Writing the perfect participant screener

6 Nov 2008 - "Know thy user" is the first principle of usability, so it's important that you involve the right kind of people in your usability study. These 8 tips for screening participants will show you how to recruit articulate, representative users for your research, quickly filter out the people you don't want and help you avoid the dreaded "no show".

How to run an unmoderated usability test

4 Sep 2008 - In an unmoderated usability test, a computer automates the process of administering a usability test. This means you can test with much larger samples than with a conventional test, calculate reliable measures of usability and feel confident that you're capturing your customer's context of use.

Morae for Usability Practitioners

2 Aug 2008 - Targeted at both new and experienced users of Morae, Morae for Usability Practitioners is a step-by-step guide to using Morae to plan, execute and analyse usability tests. Packed with insider tips and expert advice, this guide will help you use Morae to its full potential.

Site visit interviews: from good to great

2 Aug 2008 - Site visits are the best method we have of gaining real insight into the way customers work — to understand what customers do, rather than what they say they do. But to get the most from a site visit you need to polish your interviewing skills. Great interviewers show five characteristics from which we can learn.

Measuring the usability of everyday products

2 Jun 2008 - ISO have released a new standard for measuring the usability of every day products, like ticket machines, mobile phones and digital cameras. This standard, ISO 20282, includes test methods for quantifying the usability of consumer products to ensure they meet a pre-defined quality level. This development is exciting because the standard's focus on usability measurement reflects a sea change in the evolving practice of usability. In the old world, usability specialists just found usability problems with a design. In the new world, usability specialists also answer the question: "How usable is this design?"

Data collection for usability research

5 May 2008 - How should you go about collecting data in usability tests? This article examines the data collection process in usability studies and describes some popular data logging solutions. Since most of these tools are expensive, we show you how you can use Microsoft Excel with Visual Basic macros to collect the data.

SPSS: Statistics for the mathematically challenged

2 Apr 2008 - Many people enjoy behavioural research, whether it's running a usability test, fielding a survey or observing people doing their jobs. Finding things out and making new discoveries excites our natural human curiosity. But when faced with the task of analysing the data behind the research, many people feel their excitement drain away. Most of us are not excellent mathematicians and the notion of using data to test scientific hypotheses can be intimidating. But data analysis is an important aspect of virtually all research. So how can you overcome a fear of maths to learn how to use statistics?

Usability test datalogger

2 Apr 2008 - This Excel spreadsheet allows you to measure task completion rates, time-on-task, analyse questionnaire data, and summarise participant comments. Latest version just released!

Measuring satisfaction: Beyond the usability questionnaire

3 Mar 2008 - Most usability tests culminate with a short questionnaire that asks the participant to rate, usually on a 5- or 7-point scale, various characteristics of the system. Experience shows that participants are reluctant to be critical of a system, no matter how difficult they found the tasks. This article describes a guided interview technique that overcomes this problem based on a word list of over 100 adjectives. We also include a spreadsheet to generate and randomise the word list.

Measuring usability with the Common Industry Format (CIF)

4 Feb 2008 - Are you a CIO, purchasing officer, or IT manager, about to invest in productivity software for your company? If you are, here's a question you should ask your supplier before you sign on the dotted line: "Just how usable is this product?" Astonishingly, most companies won't be able to answer, and those that try will answer the question only vaguely. But now help is at hand. It's called CIF. And it's about to change the game.

Why you shouldn't ask “Why?” in a usability test

3 Sep 2007 - This year marks an important anniversary for people who moderate usability tests. In a classic study carried out exactly 30 years ago, psychologists showed that people are very poor at explaining the reasons behind their choices. This is why usability tests focus on what people do, not on what people say. So why do so many usability test moderators continue to ask participants, "Why"?

Heuristic Evaluation with Morae

2 Aug 2007 (Updated 6 Jun 2009) - Every usability professional knows that Morae is a useful tool for running a software or web usability test. But did you know you could also use it to dramatically speed up the time it takes to do a heuristic evaluation? This 'How do I…' article gives you step-by-step instructions on how to carry out an expert review with Morae, complete with explanatory screen shots.

20 tips for writing web surveys

1 May 2007 - Many people think questionnaire and survey design is common sense. If that's true then common sense can't be that common because many surveys on the web are very poorly designed. For example, surveys often ask irrelevant questions or biased questions or just too many questions. These problems make the resulting data impossible to analyse. This article reviews best practice in survey design.

Usability Expert Reviews: Beyond Heuristic Evaluation

16 Apr 2007 - Most people that carry out usability expert reviews use Jakob Nielsen's ten usability 'heuristics'. Many of these guidelines are common sense but they are not based on substantive research. The International usability standard, BS EN-ISO 9241-110 proposes an alternative set of seven guidelines. These guidelines have the benefit of international consensus and they can be applied to any interactive system.

Usability Test Plan Toolkit

2 Jan 2007 - This eBook contains all you need to make sure that you're fully prepared for your next usability test. The document includes easy to customise usability test forms, such as screeners, a discussion guide, questionnaires and data logging sheets.

Red route usability

25 Mar 2006 - Important roads in London are known as 'red routes' and Transport for London do everything in their power to make sure passenger journeys on these routes are completed as smoothly and quickly as possible. Define the red routes for your web site and you'll be able to identify and eliminate any usability obstacles on the key user journeys.

Is Consumer Research Losing Its Focus?

1 Jun 2004 - Focus groups continually fail to tell us what customers want. The fundamental problem is that, in spite of what conventional wisdom tells us, it is not the voice of the consumer that matters. What matters is the mind of the consumer. The big mistake is in believing that what the mind thinks, the voice speaks. It is time to start embracing methods that can deliver stronger predictive value.

Usability test data

17 Jun 2003 - People often throw around the terms "objective" and "subjective" when talking about the results of a usability test. These terms are frequently equated with the statistical terms "quantitative" and "qualitative". The analogy is false, and this misunderstanding can have consequences for the interpretations and conclusions of usability tests.

Standards update: Usability test reporting

5 Jun 2003 (Updated 21 Apr 2006) - It's a truism that even a bad usability test will help improve your software. But the findings from different usability tests are notoriously difficult to compare. This makes it difficult to track usability improvements or to see how you compare against an earlier product. A new international standard looks set to solve this problem.

Discount usability: time to push back the pendulum?

2 May 2003 - Discount usability techniques are a great way to eradicate usability problems. But they can never answer the question, "How usable is this system?" We blow the dust off some techniques commonly used in the early days of usability testing to see if they can provide an answer.

Checkpoints for reviewing usability test reports

10 Jan 2005 - Usability practitioners are called on, not only to conduct many research studies during their careers, but also to read, review, and advise on usability studies that have been conducted and reported by others. The ability to critically review the research of others, and to help stakeholders weigh up the merits or shortcomings of research data and conclusions, is an extremely valuable skill. These checkpoints will help you ensure your review covers the key issues.

User Experience Design articles & resources

Shopping basket usability: Nine tests for a usable checkout

1 Dec 2008 - With consumer budgets tightening, retailers need to fix every potential leak in their e-commerce site. Many sites lose customers during the series of screens that appear after the customer clicks the checkout button. We've observed hundreds of e-commerce sessions in our usability labs and the best performing sites demonstrate these 9 features.

Layout grids for Axure

3 Jul 2008 - Designed for use with Axure RP Pro 5, this resource will help you layout prototype web pages using the 960-grid system.

Dragons' Den Usability

5 Jan 2008 - It's easy to get caught up in the promise of new technologies and lose sight of the fundamental issues that make a product successful. By listening to the questions venture capitalists pose when reviewing new products we can develop a checklist to assess the viability of a new product idea.

Paper Prototyping with Morae

3 Dec 2007 - Morae makes it easy to log usability tests, create video highlights and allow observers to view a test in progress. But Morae is designed to support usability tests of software, not paper prototypes. This how-to article shows you how to exploit the full functionality of Morae when carrying out a paper prototype test.

Bluffers' guide to ISO 9241

2 Sep 2007 - This white paper describes each of the 17 parts of ISO 9241 in detail. Now available for viewing on-line and off-line (in pdf format).

Usability RSS feeds

2 Aug 2007 - Are you finding it difficult to keep up with the variety of web sites, blogs and articles devoted to usability? If so, help is at hand. We've put together a web page that aggregates the best of these web sites and made the page available through Netvibes.

The A-Z of Usability

4 Jul 2007 - Rather than create yet another definition of usability, we decided to take a different approach and work through the alphabet, picking one word for each letter to capture the flavour of the field. So we proudly present the A-Z of usability — or usability in 26 words.

Tips for writing user manuals

4 Jun 2007 - User manuals have a bad reputation. In a recent USA Today poll that asked readers "Which technological things have the ability to confuse you?" user manuals came out top! Increasingly companies are rethinking the way they approach user manuals. Here are some suggestions for improving the usability of user manuals based on our experience writing them.

Web accessibility tools

3 Sep 2006 - A concise list of the most useful accessibility tools on the Web. These tools and web sites are indispensable when carrying out accessibility reviews.

Four ideas for better forms

25 Apr 2005 - Do you have an uneasy feeling that your forms aren't working as well as they should? Or are you simply looking for ways of making them even better? Here are four ideas for better forms.

Web Standards: User Interface Makeovers

16 Aug 2004 - We often come across the misperception that an accessible site means an ugly site. In fact, by following standards, designers can create virtually any visual design yet still make it accessible. Just to prove it, our associate Trevor Morris carried out makeovers of nokia.com and vodafone.co.uk. Neither site met even the minimum levels of accessibility before he started. Once he had finished, both sites were "AAA" accessible. This is of enormous benefit to a disabled user — yet to a sighted user the original and "madeover" sites look virtually identical.

Web Accessibility: No More Mr Nice Guy

23 Apr 2004 - Last week the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) published a significant report on web accessibility. This report marks the DRC’s intention to get tough with organisations whose web sites cannot be used by disabled people. Over the next twelve months, we predict that the report will influence redesigns of virtually every major web site in the UK as organisations jockey with each other to avoid getting sued.

Web Usability: A New International Standard

5 Feb 2004 - ISO is developing a new standard for web usability. The new standard will be of interest to anyone who designs, evaluates or commissions web sites and it is likely to have a significant impact in improving the overall usability of the web.

Omnigraffle and Visio UCD stencils

6 Apr 2009 - These stencils will help you communicate user-centered design activities and proposals to clients and development teams.

E-Commerce Usability

This e-commerce usability book introduced the notion of "customer centred design".

Effective Color Displays

This book is for people who want to use color effectively in user interface design.

User Experience Management articles & resources

How to create a usability test highlights video you can be proud of

8 Apr 2009 - There’s no shortage of software that will record videos from usability tests, but how do you put the clips together in a way that will convince management and the design team to take action on your results? Our solution is to use the rule of 5: Create 5 separate highlights videos each focusing on one usability issue, with each issue comprising 5 clips and with each video lasting 5 minutes or less.

Two measures that will justify any design change

9 Mar 2009 - Two measures commonly taken in a usability test — success rate and time on task — are the critical numbers you need to prove the benefits of almost any potential design change. These values can be re-expressed in the language that managers understand: the expected financial benefit.

Creating a usability dashboard

10 Feb 2009 - We're often told that senior managers don't have the time to read a detailed report describing the findings from a usability test. This means our thoroughly argued, carefully analysed and clearly presented 60-page report could have no effect on improving the product or changing the culture. How can we better engage managers with our data?

Credit-Crunch Usability: 10 ways to maximise your usability budget

1 Oct 2008 - Being frugal during economic hard times is good business practice. So how can you squeeze your usability budget and still deliver great insights? These 10 suggestions for streamlining your usability efforts explode the myth that usability is expensive and time-consuming.

A Business Case for Usability

1 Oct 2007 - Until usability gets embedded in the processes of your company, you'll probably find you need to justify the investment. Fortunately, usability initiatives deliver a major return on investment: it's not unusual for usability projects to return benefits of 5-10 times their cost in the first year alone.

Selling usability to your manager

2 Nov 2006 - Before you can implement a usability initiative in your organisation, you'll need to convince your manager it's worthwhile. The obvious approach is to use a cost-benefit argument, but experience shows that this approach often fails because many managers find the data unconvincing. An alternative approach is to tailor your argument based on your manager's MBTI personality type. This approach generates many different ideas for selling usability within your organisation and is much more persuasive.

Institutionalising Usability: 5 Ways to embed usability in your company

24 Sep 2005 - Trying to embed usability in an organisation needs more than persuasive, logical arguments. You also need to appeal to managers' emotions and political ambitions. This article describes five successful strategies that we've seen work in companies large and small.

World Usability Day Quotation posters

14 Nov 2006 - “A mobile phone needs a manual in the way a teacup doesn't.” Brighten up your office and help spread the word with one of our World Usability Day quotation posters. Or print a couple on postcard-sized photo paper and send them to manufacturers of hard-to-use products with your own witty aphorism on the back.

Are you customer centred?

3 Sep 2005 - This Excel spreadsheet provides a test to help you measure the "customer-centredness" of your organisation.

Usability crosswords

15 Jul 2008 - These crosswords feature words and concepts in usability. Use them in your training courses or to raise awareness of usability in your team.

Usability case studies

These case studies from our consulting practice will show you how usability is applied in the real world.