Everyone knows that their product should be "user friendly" but how can you tell if it is? Here are 10 things you need to know about conducting usability evaluations of your software.

1. 10 things you need to know
about usability testing
Jana Sedivy

2. start testing right now
#1

3. What most people do
Oh well, too late to fix it now…
We’ll fix it in the next release!

4. What you should do
What an awesome product!

5. You can test with this
Fully functioning product

6. Or this
wireframes

7. Or even this!
Paper prototypes

8. My personal preferred combo
Balsamiq wireframes InVision App
+
(Total cost ~$100)
(to make it clickable)

9. How NOT to do a usability test
#2

10. Give a tour to a colleague
http://bit.ly/12KsLo2

11. “So, what do you think?”
http://bit.ly/19iHMxs

12. People will always ask for more stuff
They might not be your target user
Even though they don’t really want it
So who cares what they think?
You don’t want their opinion
You want their data

13. Ask the right users
#3

14. If these are your users
http://bit.ly/16gRZse

15. Don’t ask his opinion
(Even if he’s very smart)

16. Your users should not be hard to
find
#4

17. How to find users
+
1) Customers!
4)
5)
2) Friends and family
3) Visitors to your web site +

18. (sometimes)
Offer money

19. 6-8 participants is great
But you can get away with 4-5
The problems you will find
The problems you have
resources to fix
Credit: Steve Krug

20. If you can’t find any users…
That might be a sign
they don’t exist!

21. Define concrete tasks for users to
complete and ask them to “think
aloud”
#5

22. Bad
Good!
“What are your thoughts about
this screen?”
“I’d like you to set up a
conference call between John
Smith and Sanjiv Rashad”
Don’t expect users to just poke around

23. Tasks should
Represent features you are building in the
current/next sprint
Be critical, frequent tasks
Test your assumptions

24. 6-8 tasks is usually about right
Reverse task order between
participants

25. “What are you looking for
here?”
“Is that what you expected?”
Ask them to “think aloud”
“where do you think you
would go to find this
information?”
“Does this situation come up
often for you?”

26. SHUT UP!
#6

27. 2 ears
2 eyes
1 mouth
Use in those proportions!

28. Don’t listen to what users say
#7

29. Pay attention to what they do!
“I find this button
confusing”
Did they find it?
Then it wasn’t THAT confusing…
http://bit.ly/1atLJRr

30. Pay attention to what they do!
Did they succeed in the tasks?
If not, it’s not easy to use.
http://bit.ly/11MeTmZ
“This is pretty easy to
use!”

31. What they do tells you what they have
problems with
http://bit.ly/11MeTmZ
What they say helps you understand
why

32. Don’t let participants speak for
others
#8

33. “What about you? Would
you want to customize this?
Tell me about it.”
If you have the right people in your sessions they
are qualified to speak for themselves.

34. Don’t explain why your system
operates that way
#9

35. “Well, if we did it that way,
the search would not be
scalable to tens of thousands
of records.”
http://bit.ly/12dOBde

36. In the “real world”, users won’t have you there to
explain it.
So you had better understand how they see things.
“what the
$*#&@!!?”

37. Remember, you are there to listen
If you keep telling participants why
they are wrong, they will stop talking.

38. There will be some tough calls to make
It’s your job to consider the trade-offs
afterwards.

39. Don’t write a report
#10

40. The people you are doing this for
should be there, live.
All the stakeholders should attend
Product manager
Designer
Lead engineer
Then discuss afterwards

41. Make the test results part of your
process
Put big issues into Jira / Wiki / Bugzilla
For smaller issues - have a bug called
“Fix 80% of usability bugs”

42. Recommend:
2 hours every 6 weeks directly
observing customers
http://www.uie.com/articles/user_exposure_hours/

43. The fastest path to great UX is regular exposure
to your users.

44. Thank you!
jana@authenticInsight.com
@janasedivy