What is it?
Usability testing is a technique used in user-centric interaction design to evaluate a product by testing in on users. In a usability testing session, a researcher (called a “facilitator” or a “moderator”) asks a participant to perform tasks, usually using one or more specific user interfaces. While the participant completes each task, the researcher observes the participant’s behavior and listens for feedback.
Why Use This Method?
The goals of usability testing very by study, but they usually include:
Identifying pain points or problems in the design of a product or service
Uncovering opportunities for improvement
Learning about the target userbase’s feelings and preferences.
Conducting a Usability Test
For my proposed redesign of database site IMDb, since I am in the early stages of redesign, I decided to keep my study relatively simple and test three participants in total. Prior to these tests, I prepared materials to ensure I received the most productive feedback. I prepared a script using Steve Krug’s testing example in his book Please Don’t Make Me Think to guide the participants through their session. The scripts included an introduction, warm up questions to gain better understanding of the user, the tasks to complete, and a set of wrap up questions.
The tasks that the participants were asked to complete were based on hypothetical scenarios inspired by user personas I created. These were common situations that users might encounter when using IMDb.
To ensure all feedback was accounted for, I asked for consent to record each session.
Sessions
Two out of the three users were tested in person and the remaining was tested remotely, over zoom. In each session, the screen the user was interacting with was recorded as they worked through the set of five tasks.
The objectives of these tasks were to test the site’s navigation, organization of information, and highlighting of site features.
Analysis
After the sessions were completed, I went back through the recordings and timed how long it took each user to complete each task. This helped me compare the difficulty levels of each task and allowed me to cross reference that with the participants’ technology familiarity.
All three participants mentioned multiple times throughout the survey that they found the site to be very “busy”, making it difficult for them to navigate through the tasks they were given.
These sessions opened my eyes to how different people viewed the site and similar feelings they shared. As someone who has become deeply familiar with the site over the last few weeks, it was interesting to see participants completely bypass features the scenarios I had created focused on. In other part of the sessions, participants brought problems or features to my attention that I, myself, had overlooked during my initial evaluation.
This process highlights the importance of user feedback and usability testing itself. As Steve Krug said, more often than not usability testing is often used “too little, too late, and for all the wrong reasons”. The insights I gathered allow me to better focus what needs to be done to better the user experience on IMDb.
Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash
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