Comments on: UIEtips Article: Usability Testing. Oh, The Things You Can Learn.

By: Maree Kimberley

Maree Kimberley — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:53:10 +0000

Often a useful side effect of testing results is user comments about aspects of your product/design that you’re not specifically testing. In this way, usability testing provides feedback that helps people within your organisation to see your business through fresh eyes - those of your customers. Thus, apart from all its other benefits, usability testing is a great way to get close to your customers.

By: Daniel Szuc

Daniel Szuc — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 03:56:34 +0000

Good reading!

Sometimes it would be nice to be able to download a MP3 of the article so I can listen to the article on my iPod.

Also gives the article some personality from the author. Be a nice addition perhaps the next phase of content publishing on the web - vlogs We may do the same one day with our articles.

By: Paula Thornton

Paula Thornton — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:44:30 +0000

Jared: You’ve discovered what I also discovered, but on a larger scale. Usability testing is but one of at least 5 distinct areas of Design Research. I learned about the signficance of these 5 areas and the need not only to do them yourself, but also to collect the results and share them, with commentary as a corporate asset, while at a major semiconductor manufacturer, which outsourced a lot of these activities. When I went under the covers of these ‘automated’ services, I discovered that most of what was being tracked was useless, or had errors in the tracking.

All of these various methods feed one another. The less expensive methods should be used to point to deeper research that then justifies the investment in more expensive methods.

Part of the challenge to this and other activities is that they are not inherently part of most organizations and there is no one who would otherwise champion them for strategic funding. They’re stuck in a no-mans-land between IT and Marketing — never mind the implications as Enterprise 2.0 starts kicking up.

There is a tremendous need for new roles and new organizational structures to support them. Until we get those parts of the stories told, the actitives will continue to just fall on the floor (or get shipped out to service providers).

By: Steve Fisher

Steve Fisher — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:03:07 +0000

I just conducted my first usability test - mostly to verify what usability problems I thought existed with our current site before starting to redesign it, but also to communicate to management our current issues with the site. While I can definitely improve how I conduct a usability test, I still got lots of great information - particularly how our site is used. I was surprised to find that those I considered to have more computer and Internet experience had a more difficult time and took longer to complete tasks than those I considered to have less experience.

I would like to have at least two more usability tests as the redesign progresses, but at a wider scale than what I did with the first test. I’ll just have to figure out how to best get the right people for testing while keeping costs at a minimum.

I also want to add that Rolf Molich’s “Advanced Methods for Usability Testing” at UI11 was very helpful for me in this process!