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USABILITY TESTINGUsability testing is the most well-known and most visible of a user interface designer's techniques. Target users are invited to work with a prototype or nearly finished product. Historically, this takes place in a lab with a one-way mirror. More and more, this happens in the field, especially when users are specialized professionals who work in unusual workplaces like a hospital. There are two main benefits to usability testing: finding design flaws, and developing empathy among the development team. Usability testing should be carried out on any product before it ships, just like programmers run tests on programs to make sure they don't crash. However, a user interface review by an expert, which takes just a day or two, can often reveal major problems more quickly and cheaply than a lab study, so usability testing is not necessarily always the best way to find design flaws, though it is quite effective. The main benefit of usability testing is when the development team can watch users struggling with the difficult parts of an application. It is one thing for me to present a report of the study, but it is much more effective when the development team sees the application through a newcomer's eyes. This is why labs have the one-way mirrors—it lets dozens of people watch without bothering the test participant and the facilitator. A typical study involves five to eight target users. It's a good idea to keep studies to less than an hour at a time. Designing, conducting, and analyzing the results generally takes me two or three weeks. |
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