What is usability testing?
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Usability testing involves having representative users perform tasks and observe where they succeed and struggle. It is important to test individually without help. Initial tests with 5 users are typically enough to identify most usability problems as additional users provide overlapping feedback. Running many small tests with 5 users each and redesigning between tests identifies issues efficiently. While a single user provides initial insights, 3-5 users are needed to account for diversity in behavior. Testing should increase if distinct user groups exist.
What is usability testing?
- 2. startupproduct.comTM Definition of Usability Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use (during the design process).
- 3. startupproduct.comTM Importance of Usability On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.
- 4. startupproduct.comTM Quality Components 1. Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design? 2. Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks? 3. Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency? 4. Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors? 5. Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design? 6. Utility: Does it do what users need for it to be functional?
- 5. startupproduct.comTM Usefulness Definition of Utility whether it provides the features you need. Definition of Usability how easy & pleasant these features are to use. Definition of Useful = usability + utility.
- 6. startupproduct.comTM Usefulness Definition of Utility whether it provides the features you need. Definition of Usability how easy & pleasant these features are to use. Definition of Useful = usability + utility.
- 7. startupproduct.comTM How to Improve Usability There are many methods for studying usability, but the most basic and useful is user testing, which has 3 components: 1. Get hold of some users, ideally representative of your target market, but any will do for initial feedback. 2. Ask the users to perform representative tasks with the design or ask them to review the site and record their feedback in real time. 3. Observe what the users do, where they succeed, and where they have difficulties with the user interface. Shut up and let the users do the talking.
- 8. startupproduct.comTM Initial Tests It's important to test users individually and let them solve any problems on their own. If you help them or direct their attention to any particular part of the screen, you have contaminated the test results. To identify a design's most important usability problems, testing 5 users is typically enough. Rather than run a big, expensive study, it's a better use of resources to run many small tests and revise the design between each one so you can fix the usability flaws as you identify them.
- 9. startupproduct.comTM Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford. The number of usability problems found in a usability test with n users is: N (1-(1- L ) n ) where N is the total number of usability problems in the design and L is the proportion of usability problems discovered while testing a single user. The typical value of L is 31%, averaged across a large number of projects we studied. Plotting the curve for L =31% gives the following result:
- 10. startupproduct.comTM Only Need to Test with 5 Users The most striking truth of the curve is that zero users give zero insights.As soon as you collect data from a single test user, your insights shoot up and you have already learned almost a third of all there is to know about the usability of the design. The difference between zero and even a little bit of data is astounding. When you test the second user, you will discover that this person does some of the same things as the first user, so there is some overlap in what you learn. People are definitely different, so there will also be something new that the second user does that you did not observe with the first user. So the second user adds some amount of new insight, but not nearly as much as the first user did. The third user will do many things that you already observed with the first user or with the second user and even some things that you have already seen twice. Plus, of course, the third user will generate a small amount of new data, even if not as much as the first and the second user did. As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again. There is no real need to keep observing the same thing multiple times, and you will be very motivated to go back to the drawing board and redesign the site to eliminate the usability problems. After the fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.
- 11. startupproduct.comTM Why Not Test With a Single User? You might think that 15 studies with a single user would be even better than 3 studies with 5 users. The curve does show that we learn much more from the first user than from any subsequent users, so why keep going? Two reasons: ● There is always a risk of being misled by the spurious behavior of a single person who may perform certain actions by accident or in an unrepresentative manner. Even 3 users are enough to get an idea of the diversity in user behavior and insight into what's unique and what can be generalized. ● The cost-benefit analysis of user testing provides the optimal ratio around 3 or 5 users, depending on the style of testing. There is always a fixed initial cost associated with planning and running a study: it is better to depreciate this start-up cost across the findings from multiple users.
- 12. startupproduct.comTM When To Test More Users You need to test additional users when a website has several highly distinct groups of users. The formula only holds for comparable users who will be using the site in fairly similar ways. If, for example, you have a site that will be used by both children and parents, then the two groups of users will have sufficiently different behavior that it becomes necessary to test with people from both groups. The same would be true for a system aimed at connecting purchasing agents with sales staff. Even when the groups of users are very different, there will still be great similarities between the observations from the two groups. All the users are human, after all. Also, many of the usability problems are related to the fundamental way people interact with the Web and the influence from other sites on user behavior.
- 13. startupproduct.comTM REFERENCE Nielsen, Jakob, and Landauer, Thomas K.: "A mathematical model of the finding of usability problems," Proceedings of ACM INTERCHI'93 Conference (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 24-29 April 1993), pp. 206-213. https://www.nngroup.com