Detailed Understand of Usability Testing: What? Why? & How?

Usability Testing is a Black Box Testing Technique. Usability testing is done with the user’s point of view. It is a technique implemented in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product or service by testing it with representative users. On the Web page, the usability is the most important and required condition for survival. If the website is difficult to use then peoples will not stay on the page. If the page content or details are hard to read or understand then also peoples will leave the page. So this testing plays an important role that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use.

In this tutorial we are going to learn below topics:

What is Usability Testing? Definition

What is Usability Testing? Definition

The testing aim is to recognize any usability problems, gather qualitative and quantitative data and establish the participant’s fulfillment with the product.

Usability testing software is an essential element of quality assurance. It is the measure of a product’s potential to accomplish the goals of the user. UT is a method by which users of a product are asked to perform certain tasks in an effort to measure the product’s ease-of-use, task time, and the user’s perception of the experience. This looks like a unique usability practice because it provides direct input on how real users use the system. Usability testing measures human-usable products to fulfill the user’s purpose. The item which takes benefit from the usability test is web sites or web applications, documents, computer interfaces, consumer products, and devices. Sometimes we call it user testing websites. This testing processes the usability of a particular object or group of objects, where common human-computer interaction studies try to formulate universal principles.

Usability features like “Look and feel” cannot be measured at all times because they are subjective in nature. In this testing, mostly testers test the ease with the use of user interface. The tester can test user-friendly or non-friendly applications or the products too. This testing is a true test of how people actually use a web site & determines that whether the user is feeling comfortable with other applications or Web sites according to different parameters like; the flow, browsing, and layout, speed, and content.

The usability testing checklist is divided into three parts Accessibility, Navigation, and Content.

Section I: Accessibility

• Check about the load time of the Website is realistic.
• Check if Adequate Text-to-Background Contrast is present.
• Check if font size & spacing between the texts is properly readable.
• Check if a website has its 404 pages or any custom designed Not Found page.
• Check if appropriate ALT tags are added for images.

Section II: Navigation

• Check if the user effortlessly recognizes the website navigation.
• Check if navigation options are understandable & short.
• Check if the number of buttons/links are reasonable
• Check if the Company Logo Is Linked to Home-page
• Check if the style of links is consistent on all pages & easy to understand.
• Check if site search is present on-page & should be easy to access.

Section III: Content

• Check if URLs Are Meaningful & User-friendly
• Check if HTML Page Titles Are Explanatory
• Check if Critical Content Is Above The Fold
• Check if Emphasis (bold, etc.) Is Used Sparingly
• Check if Main Copy Is Concise & Explanatory
• Check if Major Headings Are Clear & Descriptive
• Check if Styles & Colors Are Consistent

Usability Testing Key Benefits

• Decrease development and redesign cost which increases user satisfaction.
• Help to determine the real requirements and tasks of the user before time in the design process.
• Analysis of your website design’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Limit graphics with functions of design.
• User productivity increases cost decreases.
• Increase business due to satisfied customers.
• Reduces user acclimation time and errors.
• Provide better quality software to the end-user or the customer.
• The software will be easy to understand and use by the end-user or the customer.
• Software is more gladly accepted by users.
• Shorten the learning curve for new users.

Usability Testing Advantages

• Usability testing finds important bugs and potholes of the tested application which will be not visible to the developer.
• Using correct resources, user experience tests can assist in fixing all problems that users face before application releases.
• Usability tests can be modified according to the requirement to support other types of testing such as functional testing, system integration testing, Unit testing, smoke testing, etc.
• Planned Usability testing becomes very economic, highly successful and beneficial.
• Issues and potential problems are highlighted before the product is launched.

Usability Testing Disadvantages

The most important thing in UX testing is a cost associated to do set up a UX test lab. Not only the cost but also the recruitment and management of usability testers can be expensive.

Usability Testing Limitations:

Planning and data-collecting process are time-consuming. It is always confusing that why usability problems come. Its small and simple size makes it unreliable for drawing conclusions about subjective user preferences. It’s hard to create a suitable context. You can’t test long-term experiences. Unplanned social connections cannot be replicated. People act in a different way when they know they’re being observed.

Over to you:

Testing usability is an art and a science. Have you ever worked on Usability testing? What is your experience while testing these applications? please share your experience in the comments below.

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