Usability Testing

What is Usability Testing?

You have an inherent understanding of your company and it's Web site. You understand the logic of the site structure, but what happens when you put someone completely new to the site in front of it? What you can learn will be invaluable!

How can the I Team help?

We can:

Reveiw your needs, requirements and goals
Organise & recruit testing groups
Conduct filmed tests
Analyse the output and report back with key recomendations

Usability studies can range enormously in their complexity and scale. Contact us today to discuss the options!

When should I do it?

From the storyboard stage of development and onwards. It is never to early to start and even if you have an established site, you should seriously consider undertaking a study of some description.

Who should I use as testers?

Opinion varies; some say you need a large group selected from your specific target audiences, but actually you can get substantive input from anyone who is not directly associated with your company, industry sector or Web sites in general. After all, what we are trying to learn is how an individual moves through your site.

How should I conduct a usability test?

Setup

This can depend on your budget. It is better to conduct a simple test than none at all. At one end of the spectrum, you could select a large group from each of your audience sectors and film them through one way mirrors with two cameras, an interviewer and an analyst watching their activity on a seperate machine. On the other hand, you could simply sit someone down in front of a machine and take notes on their behaviour.

Records

A word of advice, if you can film it do. There is rarely enough time to annotate activity accurately and keep the study "realistic".

Technique

Give your tester a task such as looking for information on a particular service or product. Stay with the tester asking open questions; "what catches your eye?", "where will you go next?" etc. Ask them to explain their actions as they are doing them.