A Practical Guide to Usability Testing
For people in design teams who want to gain confidence in usability testing, “A practical guide to usability testing” is a 1-day workshop that shows delegates how to obtain customer feedback on prototypes and finished products. Unlike lecture-based courses, delegates get practical, hands-on experience moderating and logging usability tests.
After attending this usability testing training course, you will be able to confidently carry out a usability test of your company's product or website. In addition to the course notes, we provide forms and templates you can adapt for your own usability tests. This seminar is led by Dr. David Travis who has over 20 years experience in the field of user centred design.
"This course is excellent in providing you with a toolkit for usability testing. I've learnt things that I will really use."
– Helen Towers, Kudos Information Systems.
Need to convince your boss? Download and edit our approval letter (MS Word format, 252 kb).
Free refresher training
Our usability training continues after you leave the seminar. People that attend "A practical guide to usability testing" are eligible for free refresher training. After the seminar, we'll send you a series of follow up articles highlighting different aspects of the training, specifically written to help you apply what you learnt.
Overview
Usability testing is the method of choice for organisations that want to understand how customers use their product, software or web site. In contrast to market research methods, usability testing delivers strong predictive value, demonstrating how real people will use the product in the real world.
But there are several different types of usability test, making it difficult for novices to choose a technique. Usability testing is also very different from interviews or focus groups and requires a well-trained test administrator. This workshop provides a practical path through the various methods, helping you pick the right kind of test for your product, showing you how to plan, carry out and analyse a usability test, and describing persuasive techniques for presenting the results to developers and managers. You will also get hands-on experience administering and observing a usability test and gain the kind of practical knowledge that you can’t get from reading a book.
By attending this usability testing course you will learn how to
- Write a screener to recruit the right test participants.
- Write a usability test plan to get buy-in from management and the development team.
- Develop test tasks that are relevant to your customers and your business.
- Choose the right usability test method for your product and its lifecycle phase.
- Design usability tests that meet international standards in usability.
- Adapt our standard forms and templates for your own tests.
- Moderate usability tests.
- Collect and analyse behavioural data.
- Persuade managers and developers to take action based on your test results.
What will I learn?
Introduction – Why test for usability?
- Syndicate activity: Defining usability
Distinguishing usability testing from other user research methods
- Characteristics of tests
- Problems with opinion-based research
- Usability activities in the design lifecycle: from contextual inquiry to eye tracking
Forming a Test Strategy
- Four common mistakes in running a usability test
- How to write a test plan
- Writing a participant screener
- Examples of routine forms used in usability tests
Writing test tasks
- How to pick the right tasks
- The six-step scenario checklist
- Syndicate activity: write a scenario
Testing Early Prototypes
- How a formative test works
- Testing from the participant’s perspective
- Techniques for getting participants to think aloud
How to moderate a usability test
- Obstacles to good moderation
- When to use empathic questioning
How to log a usability test
- How to classify your observation
- Datalogging: Practical activity (includes video footage from a usability test)
- Syndicate activity: “thinking aloud” usability test
Testing Advanced Prototypes
- How a summative test works
- The pros and cons of usability labs
- The role of the administrator in a summative test
- Test bias and how to avoid it
Measures and Metrics
- BS-EN ISO 9241: The three elements of usability
- Software tools for usability testing
- Using the Binomial Confidence Interval and z-scores to account for variation
- Using test data to calculate the costs and benefits of usability fixes
- Tracking usability metrics: the four ranges
- Syndicate activity: summative usability test activity
Reporting Results
- Four ways to engage the design team with usability data
- How to use your results to influence managers
- The ANSI Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports
Price and availability for "Practical usability testing"
"Practical usability testing" public training
Next public seminar in usability testing:
- June 3rd 2008, London.
£425/delegate + VAT. (You don't need to pay now, we'll invoice you).
Your booking fee includes a free copy of our Usability Test Plan Toolkit, worth £55.
What delegates say about our usability testing training
- “I now realise that what we've been calling "usability testing" only scratches the surface of true usability testing. I'm looking forward to trying out some new techniques!” – Peter Dearden, Vertex.
- “I really enjoyed the hands-on testing in small groups and finding out how to formally carry out structured tests.” – Kellie Chandler, Interoute.
- “David's excellent delivery made a technical subject that much more understandable.” – Timothy Cox, Alcatel.
- “Before I did the course I had my suspicions that usability was a little hocus-pocus. Now I'm starting to see the light.” – Richard Pineger, Kudos Information Systems.
- “A very worthwhile day. I learnt several new techniques that I can apply immediately in my job.” – Tom Taylor, Euroffice.
- “It was great to expand my knowledge and pick up new 'tips and tricks'.” – Rebecca Trounson, hotonline.com.
Duration
This usability testing course lasts one day.
This usability testing training seminar is aimed at
- Interface designers who want to experience hands-on techniques for testing and evaluating their designs with end users.
- E-commerce developers who want to choose the right usability test for the current product lifecycle stage.
- Project managers who want to manage the usability testing process.
- Marketing managers who want to see samples of usability test reports, usability questionnaires, screeners and other deliverables from usability tests.
- Business analysts who want to use performance-based testing to communicate the cost-benefits of the user experience.
- Website designers who want to learn the kind of practical knowledge that you can't get from reading a book.
"Practical usability testing" in-house training
We can customise our usability testing training by focusing on a usability test of your actual product or website and run it on your company premises for 4-12 delegates. Prices from £150/delegate + VAT (assuming 12 delegates). Please contact us for more information.
Money back guarantee
On completion of a public usability testing training seminar, if you don't think that the usability training will help you do your job better, we will refund your registration fee in full.