Taking the Guesswork and Opinions Out of Design Decisions

To understand what our Usability Testing services are all about, let’s start by letting you know what they are not. They are not about spending weeks recruiting users and observing them in a one-way mirrored room while we burn through your entire budget. Our Usability Tests typically involve 3-5 users for about 20 minutes each. Sometimes we bring them into our office. Sometimes we conduct web conferences and point them to a test site. Since the primary goal is to learn how real people use something before it is developed, it doesn’t take much effort to gain a whole lot of valuable knowledge. To us, a great-looking screen that is difficult to use is a bad design — and the best way to know if you have a great design or not is to test it.

It’s a science but it’s not rocket science

The first thing we do before we start testing is set the expectations for what knowledge we expect to gain and what method of testing should be used.

1. What are we looking to accomplish?
2. Are there specific areas we suspect are causing issues?
3. What questions should we be asking?
4. What user scenarios should we be testing?
5. What are the user personas we need to test?
6. What type of screen designs are needed for the tests?
   • Wireframes
   • Visual Design Mockups
   • HTML/CSS prototype?

Then, since we know it is far more important to rely on what users do rather than what they say, we typically show a user one screen at a time design and ask them questions, such as:

1. Can you describe everything you see on this screen and what you think everything does?
2. If you needed to [task name], how would you do it on this screen?
3. If you clicked on [UI element], what would you expect to happen and what would you expect to see next?
4. What do you think these [label names, menu option names, etc.] mean to you?

Finally, we compile the results, look for commonalities and patterns, and present our findings and recommendations.