How to Conduct Usability Testing: Best Practices and Tips for Success
- Balaramia Balakrishnan
- Oct 3, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 29
Usability means letting the needs of end-users inform the design. Usability means starting from the user’s point of view. Usability means observing real people interaction with your product, assessing, and drawing informative conclusions. Usability means whether an app/website can be used for its intended purpose. Usability means more than "ease of use" and it revolves around the 5 Es – efficient, effective, engaging, error tolerant and easy to learn.
Why ??
Worked hard to create a new app, website, product,
Users just don’t vibe with it?
Key to discover how real users experience your product before you bring it to market.
The reality is, when you build something, you become deeply familiar with it. So familiar that you might find yourself blind to its flaws.
It’s the ultimate bias-remover.
Methods
Formative Testing: Conducted during the development phase to make immediate changes.
Summative Testing: Performed after the product release to assess its effectiveness.
Remote Testing: Users are evaluated remotely, either moderated or not.
In-Person Testing: Conducted face-to-face, offering real-time feedback and deeper insights.
When??
When you are trying to understand the difference between what you think your users will do with your product and what they actually do/can do…
As a continuous process rather than a point-in-time activity. Your aim as a Product Manager is to continuously learn and iterate on your product before and after launch.
If you are conducting these tests before launch, you should do it before any development work and use prototypes
Types Of Usability Test
Exploratory – To be performed early in the Design Phase, to compare how well the functions made match with user expect. Here, the tester are asked to compare the website features with expectation and hopes
Assessment – To be performed Early to Midway through the design phase to determine how well the features are implemented. Testers are observed and records their difficulty.
Evaluation – After the website in use, to determine if the existing website is achieving its goals
Comparison – Early in the phase or anytime, to compare the two or more websites design approaches. Testers are asked to create a new design combining all strong features of tested design
How??
3 Element of Usability Testing
A usability test begins with marketers and researchers recruiting a group of people who represent a product’s target market.
Then, a facilitator leads the group through a series of hands-on tasks under controlled conditions while a researcher observes and takes notes.
The researcher asks questions, notes where problems or frustrations arise, and takes stock of how the user experiences the product.
Tips
Tip 1: Treat your participants as regular people rather than participants . You can start by not using the word participant. When people think that they are part of a study they get too nervous and don’t act like their normal selves
Tip 2: Don’t just listen to their answers to your questions, observe them. People say one thing and do another
Tip 3: Make sure to let them know that you are not testing them but rather you are testing your product. Generally, participants feel like they should do everything right and answer everything right. However, of course, they don’t know that there are no right answers. Make sure they know that there is nothing that they can do wrong.
Determine your research goals.
Create scenarios for usability tasks.
Decide on your testing procedures.
Create a plan for usability testing.
Identify and hire user testers.
In Usability Testing, the user-friendliness can be calculated with the help of the following parameters:
01 The minimum amount of time to find/execute – Find Pending Friend request option – Optimize 3s, Any new similar app comes, user then switch
02 Cannot execute a simple task without any help after a duration (comeback) – Create group
03 Ensures no inappropriate/irrelevant data or information exists in the product. Finding broken links – Threads, Explore discoverable servers
04 The end-user takes a minimum amount of time to learn the fundamental task. – Create group
05 The satisfied customer can easily or freely use the application – Compare skype, discord
06 At this point, we try to help the end-users fix those errors they made earlier and accomplish their tasks all over again. - Repeat
Key Points to Remember
Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable.
The flow of an Application should be good
Navigation steps should be clear
Content should be simple
The layout should be clear
Response time
How easy it is using the application
How easy to learn application
Data Analysis
To conduct user research analysis you will need,
Recordings of usability tests to playback
A stack of post-its, ideally one color for each user observed
A large whiteboard or wall to map out insights
Step 1: Create categories to group insights under
Divide the board for the following features and label it Login = LI, Account Overview = AO etc. to keep track of where the insight came from
Personal
Login
Account Overview
Payments
Contact Us
General
Step 2: Listen to your recordings and write down insights
Get the post-it notes at the ready (one colour per user)
Start playing back the recordings, one user at a time
Begin noting down insights (one insight per post-it)
Add a label to each post-it (using your abbreviated labels)
Place it down on your desk and prepare for the next one
For a test of eight users, each an hour long, with an extra 30 mins each for insight gathering is already 12 hours of analysis
Step 3: Stick insights under their correct heading
Stick each post-it in its corresponding space on the whiteboard. Post-its with the LI label go in the Login section and so on. They can be in any order at this stage as long as they are in the right category.
Step 4: Group similar insights
Grouping similar insights will help you visualize how often they occur and give them the correct level of priority when it comes to addressing them. If you’re able to show that all five users grew frustrated at the length of the login process, then it shouldn’t take much convincing to make addressing this a high priority.
Step 5: Adjust for perceived impact if solved
The last step is to adjust the priority of the insights based on the potential impact if solved. This might seem a very subjective and assumptive task, but having four users mention they don’t like the app’s logo doesn’t mean it should be approached with the same urgency as the three users that couldn’t confirm a payment. Use your knowledge of the users and their feedback during the sessions to adjust the priority of your grouped insights and reorder them accordingly.
Severity is calculated based on the below criteria
How important is the task affected by the issue?
How high is the interference of the issue?
The sum of issue occurrences within participants?
Benefits of Usability Testing
Usability testing can help you identify problems with your website or product so that you can fix them before your users encounter them.
It can help you improve the overall user experience of your website or product.
You can increase conversion rates and sales.
Reducing support time and cost.
Improve customer satisfaction
Best usability testing tools for user-centric results
Maze
Lookback
UserTesting
Optimal Workshop
UsabilityHub
Conclusion
Usability testing reveals valuable insights into the product's strengths and weaknesses from user navigation perspective. By addressing the identified pain points, we can significantly enhance the user experience and improve overall satisfaction, thus the acceptance rate of the application.
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