Slam-dunk your next app with Usability Testing
If you're like me, you might get overwhelmed with the idea of recruiting, writing tests, administering and recording tests, compiling the data, and reporting the outcomes to affect change on the system you're testing in the first place.?
It sounds like a lot, but?Anirudh?Palaskar?made it seem palatable and achievable in his?presentation on "Usability Testing from Scratch" a little over a month ago.??
Usability Testing is a research method that is used to measure how easy and user-friendly a product is.?This type of research is necessary for a product design lifecycle because we need to?remove our inherent bias and check in with real and representative users to get their take on the product we're making.??
A company's goal should be to create products that solve the problem their users have (or don't yet know they have) with an experience the user enjoys. But, if you don't ask your users about their preferences, needs, and goals while you're building this wonderful tool, you're working with a set of assumptions. And, colloquially speaking, we know what that word means.?
Usability Testing allows us to understand how users interact with our product, reveal issues, and (importantly) fix issues early, and test again before writing a line of code.?
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Consider this scenario: We're designing a money management application and the only person in the feedback loop is the CEO. He LOVES the color red because it matches his car and alma mater, and insists that all customer-facing copy is written in sports metaphors.??
What would happen if we launched this app before testing it? The Bad: no one uses it; The Worse: people download it, use it, uninstall it, tell their friends that they don't like it, the project tanks, and the CEO fires everyone.?
That was extreme, but hyperbole makes a point.???
If you have a product idea that would benefit from Usability Testing, send me a message!
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Check out the entire talk on YouTube, and join #CalgaryUX if you want to hear more about the vast and deeply interesting topic of User Experience!?
Insatiably Curious Overthinker
2 年design can get so personal. on the one hand that's great because it means that someone behind the product design really *cares* about the outcome, but attaching your personal preferences to design and avoiding user input out of a fear that you'll be wrong... not a risk worth taking.