Usability testing is part of the User Centered Design principal. It primarily focuses on identifying any usability problems that the product has while collecting quantitative data on participants’ performance or actions so we can ultimately determine the participants’ satisfaction with the product. It is interesting that the smartest people in the world can design a new product just the way they think it should be and when they do real like tests, they find that the product is not really intuitive like they thought or that it is not as easy to use for people with different size fingers or some unique finding from performing usability testing before finalizing design.
Here in the Bay Area there are a lot of opportunities for participants to get involved in usability testing for their areas of expertise because we are R&D centric. I have made $100 gift cards from Roxio and have turned down other offers for helping the company with usability testing.
Imagine a web site that is difficult to navigate or a web page with too much going on it is hard to find what you are looking for so if you test before you launch you will have a better chance of success. Like Burpee was able probably able to buy Garden.com for less than its actual value because the site layout was so disastrous that it did not make all they sales it could have if it had used a more standard method for shoppers to shop.
If an e-shopper gets lost in a maze of clicks and doesn’t make a purchase, that’s a big problem. If a visitor decides not to register at a Web site due to the lack of a privacy statement, that’s a problem too. With proper preparation, usability testing can isolate these costly problems and point the way to solving them.
So remember before you launch your next product be sure to test it first. It is quite simple to get a participant and then you have an observer watch the participant and record the difficulties she has with the use of the product. It is a good idea to video tape the participants’ actions so the designers get a chance to see how the users behave with the product. This way it helps them on the next project.
I have tried wave on my site and it had 2 errors. Pretty good for me.
Also tried on strategicprofits.com and most common was no alt text.
I will be writing and tweeting about useful links for people including testers like the Wave 4.0 free tester.
I was very impressed; it is a visual way to find problems on the site fast. If I knew about wave I could have caught the easy to find problems right away for free. I am a visual learner so Wave is the best application to start on the web site evaluation for me. The stompernet.net scrutizinizer tool is really cool too. It does a much more through site assessment that goes beyond usability and grades to stricter standards, so I suggest you use this tool too when evaluating your site.
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Definitely a great point to evaluate your site before publishing it. If there is an error on your site it may drive potential customers away, so be sure to double check before making it live.
Keeping your customers satisfied should be one of the main aims of any business person. You can tell whenever some of them are not satisfied but to avoid this you should ask yourself how you would feel if you were in their position as the customer.
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