Usability testing

What is usability testing?

Usability testing is a method for uncovering the problems that real users experience with your product or web site under the actual conditions of use. The process involves asking participants to carry out realistic tasks and observing where they experience problems.

Why do usability testing?

Usability testing provides you with an objective analysis of how your product or web site is used in real life. Our clients are continually astonished at how this differs from the way they thought their products would be used. The data from usability tests provide critical business intelligence about the way customers behave and about how you stack up compared to the competition.

When should I do usability testing?

You can do usability testing anytime, but the earlier you carry out testing the greater the business benefits. We have carried out usability testing of early prototypes (some no more than paper sketches) through to released products. So long as people can carry out common tasks with it, we can usability test it.

Our approach to usability testing

Because people aren't very good at introspecting into their own behaviour, our usability testing methodology focuses on what people do (rather than what people say). Our technique:

• Doesn’t depend on people's ability to introspect.
• Doesn’t depend on people's memory.
• Reduces 'self-editing' in people’s accounts of use.
• Avoids over-compliance and group effects in research sessions.

Our usability testing equipment comprises:

• Pixel-perfect screen recordings of usability tests (see a screenshot).
• Detailed user paths and click-throughs.
• Picture-in-picture recording of participants carrying out the usability test.
• Mouse pointer and mouse clicks highlighted in the usability testing video to aid analysis.
• Purely digital system: no loss of detail caused by analogue conversion.

We optimise the format of our usability test report for the people who will be fixing problems, using written reports, presentations to key stakeholders, videos of usability test participants as well as usability test web reports for your intranet. We make practical design suggestions to show you how to fix problems from the usability test quickly.

We can provide usability testing labs throughout the UK (London, Birmingham, Coventry and Manchester) and in Europe (France, Germany, Italy and Poland). All these usability testing labs have viewing facilities so that you and your team can see and discuss the results of the usability test as it happens. We also have a portable usability testing lab, enabling us to usability test in people's homes or places of work.

Why Userfocus?

Our consultants have a track record of success on similar projects, having worked with clients such as Whirlpool, Kodak and eBay to help them collect usability data for a range of consumer products and web sites. We have learnt that usability tests need to be carried out consistently so that the data can be reliably compared with other products and at different points in time. This consistency includes dealing with participants in the same way, knowing when to terminate a task because a participant is confused, knowing how to measure the "start" and "stop" times of a task and using consistent judgement in defining task "success" and "failure". We are able to carry over this learning to your project, which means that you will benefit from our experience.

Case study: Usability testing of an e-commerce web site

Comet's web site is one of the UK's highest revenue e-commerce stores and small improvements in usability can have a large impact on sales. Following a major redesign of their web site, Comet wanted to identify and fix the usability issues encountered by customers when searching, selecting and purchasing products. Read usability testing case study.