Web Design : Usability Testing

By Jennifer Farley | May 18 2006 |

Usability testing is a vitally important part of the web design process. It is not difficult to put together a usability study. The following tips will help you get the most out of your testing and research.

1. You will need a number of participants who fit into the target audience profile for the website. There is no point using a set of web-savvy teenagers to test a site aimed at holidays for seniors.

2. Decide on your questions and the tasks you want your group to complete. Are you tyring to get a user response to colour schemes, fonts used, or how the navigation works? You need to figure out what you’re actually measuring.

3. A tried and tested methodology in usability testing is to get your users to rate different attributes along a sliding scale from a strong negative to a strong positive. For example, “Do you think the colours used in the site are complimentary and convey a strong idea of …”

4. Try different layouts of your pages and variations on your site. Find out which alternatives work best for your test subjects.

5.Watch what your testers DO as well as what they say. You may find that your testers say they can find the search box, but did they really. Without any intervention, try to see what’s going on, on screen.

6. Set a time limit for your testers to complete certain tasks and stick to it.

And that’s all there is to it. Ok, maybe you might want to buy your testers a drink or give them some choccies to say thanks.