Everything about Usability Testing. (Creating a testing plan, identifying metrics, compare with competitors)

You don’t wake up one day and say “hey, let’s do a usability testing on our products”. Usability testing is not something random.

After my journey of designing products and user experiences, I did some research that led me to a successful end Product, And had gather some ideas to help you & your Product to grow.

Here an article of Important points of Usability Testing with the process step by step that I used to succeed a Product??

1.What's the Usability Testing?

Usability testing is a type of Research method used to evaluate the usability and user experience of a product or service. It involves testing the product with representative users to observe how they interact with it, identify any issues or problems they encounter, and gather feedback on their overall experience.

Testing is an important part of the design and development process for any product or service, and can help to ensure that you create a product or service that meets the needs of your users and drives business success.

There are two main types of usability testing:

In recent years, usability testing has emerged as one of the most favored research methods by stakeholders. There are two main types of usability testing:

1. Moderated Usability Testing : Moderated usability testing is conducted in the setting of a lab, contextual inquiry or hallway testing. On the other hand, remote moderated usability testing is also gaining popularity to save time and cost. Read more about?remote qualitative research for UX.
2. Unmoderated Usability Testing : Unmoderated usability testing is always done online. Researchers usually go for unmoderated usability testing when a large quantity is required. Respondents have the luxury of time to complete the tasks at their home over their computer or mobile devices.

2.Why Is Usability Testing Important?

Usability testing is important because it helps to ensure that a product, service, or system is easy to use and understand for its intended users. Here are a few reasons why usability testing is important:

• Identifying user needs: Usability testing allows designers and developers to better understand the needs of users by watching them interact with a product or service. This can help to uncover problems or areas where improvements are needed.
• Improving user satisfaction: When a product or service is easy to use and understand, it can increase user satisfaction and improve their overall experience. This can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat business.
• Reducing development costs: Catching usability problems early in the development process can save time and money by avoiding costly redesigns later on.
• Increasing adoption rates: When a product or service is easy to use and understand, it is more likely to be adopted by users, leading to higher usage rates and potentially greater revenue.

Some Benefits of Usability Testing

• It measures behavior, not preference. Most of the time, users are bad at articulating what they want. By studying their behavior, you can understand what suits their goals and motivations.
• The reliability of insights from ‘we saw someone doing this’ is far beyond that of ‘we heard someone mentioning this’ from a normal focus group session.
• It gathers both quantitative and qualitative data in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
• You will be able to explore the area of improvement in functionality for your digital presence.

3.Creating a Test Plan

You don’t wake up one day and say “hey, let’s do a usability testing on our products”. Usability testing is not something random. While widely perceived as a qualitative approach, with the appropriate approach and consistency, usability testing can be quantified. It is more than just handing an application to the participants and recording the observation.

Firstly, create a testing plan or proposal. A comprehensive and methodological testing plan ensures a systematic process and a consistent data set. These make it easier to convince the management for the feasibility of the study. A good testing plan includes

• research objective,
• suitable subjects or personas for the objective,
• a set of guidelines to ensure the consistency of this study with past studies and future studies,
• tasks and the corresponding measurements and metrics
• scripts

A testing plan seems ridiculously tedious for the first time but you can use this testing plan as a foundation to create plans or proposals for all types of research in future, not just limited to usability testing.

4.Identifying the Metrics to Measure The Tasks

Identifying the metrics to measure the tasks involves determining the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are relevant to measuring the success of a particular task or process. In the context of an e-commerce app, this would involve identifying the tasks that users perform while using the app, such as making a purchase, adding items to their cart, or searching for products, and then selecting the metrics that are most relevant to measuring the success of those tasks.

• Success rate
• Time taken to complete a search
• Total page views or mouse clicks
• System Usability Scores (SUS Scores)
• Satisfaction rate

Metrics should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART), and they should align with the overall business objectives of the e-commerce app. By identifying the right metrics to measure the tasks, e-commerce app owners can gain valuable insights into how well the app is performing and where improvements can be made to optimize the user experience and increase revenue.

5.How Many Participants Is Enough for Usability Testing?

For a normal usability testing to identify issues and potential improvement for a website, experienced UX professional will tell you that five participants are more than enough. Anything beyond five will be near saturation. Saturation is a phenomenon which occurs when subsequent usability tests do not provide many additional insights.

Unlike quantitative research where you determine the sample size needed with confidence level and error margin, qualitative research typically requires less sample size.?For your study results to produce statistical significance, plan to evaluate with?10 to 12 participants per condition.

6.How Recruiting Participants for your Test

Firstly, you will need to decide whether to recruit on your own or outsource the participant recruitment. If you choose to do it on your own, you will need to find the right participants, decide the optimal participant incentives and manage the participants to prevent no-shows.

Refer to the SOP for participant recruitment

7.How Compare Against Existing Design

It is important in usability testing to have a set of procedures to ensure consistency across all the studies. With such consistency in research,?results from previous usability testing could be used as a benchmark to determine the usability of any new design or upgrade.

The example below illustrates the results comparison of the current published version (version 2.3) against the proposed version update (version 3.0):

8.How Compare against Competitors

While you are busy improving the usability of your product or website, your competitors are doing the same and might be better at it than you. That’s why you should frequently conduct usability testing on your competitors’ products and benchmark yourself against the results. It is always important to be aware of the latest technology and how your competitors are performing.

One might argue that the effort spent researching competitors would serve a better purpose on more in-house research and development activities. However, it may come as a potential loss for the company for failing to follow the next big trend and a potential revenue for the competitor.

The example below illustrates the results comparison of proposed version update (version 3.0) against Competitor A and Competitor B:

While Version 3.0 outperforms Competitor A, it is lagging behind Competitor B in terms of key metrics. During usability testing, researchers can further explore the functionality improvement needed for Version 3.0.

9.Conclusion

Usability testing is a process that helps ensure that your (Product, Project) website or app is user-friendly and easy to use. it requires a good planning and significant effort.?As a qualitative research requires more effort than a quantitative research in planning, any potential error is an opportunity cost. Go through the following checklist one or two days before the usability testing:

• Have you conducted a dry run with your colleagues?
• Have you familiarized yourself with the script for tomorrow?
• Is the recording facility ready?
• Have you or your agency called the participants to prevent no-shows?

With these, you are all set for your usability testing??

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