Usability Testing; an overview.

What is Usability Testing?

Usability Testing is a UX methodology which is used to determine how usable a product is. It is the most commonly and frequently used user centred design technique which is an ISO standard(International Standard Organization) Why should you perform Usability Testing?

Main goal of usability testing are to find out the Design flaws or imperfections, finding a better solution or opportunity and most importantly to learn about the target users. Usability testing is very common and widely used UX technique till date by almost every designers to see if they are on right track. Now you wonder how this will help the designers, right? Well, a properly performed usability testing can identify if the user meets their expectations and to see how successful they are achieving certain goals and tasks. This technique will also help to find out the user feedback and suggestions from an early stage.

Usability testing also helps the business to determine if the decisions they take or took meets the real world use and for engineers to make changes/ modifications based on the test report.

Types usability testing

There are 2 types of usability testing methods, Qualitative and Quantitative. Use of these are based on the purpose and nature of requirement. Best practice for a new product is to conduct both as it evolves. Qualitative and Quantitive types are often called Formative and Summative respectively by designers around the world

Let’s go with Qualitative and Quantitative as they are the most commonly used and relatable to almost everyone. How does these 2 differ

Qualitative

Qualitative Usability Testing focusses on gathering insights, findings about how people use a product or service. This is the most commonly used method in usability testing and it is the best method to discover the flaws in user experience. To relate with user experience, this method is actually evaluating the user’s empathy, how they feel, see, talk etc.

Quantitative

Quantitative Usability Testing focusses on metrics. In this technique used commonly to collect benchmarks. These benchmarks helps to modify the design to user’s preference. Success rate and time on task are the commonly collected metrics. This method helps you make concrete usability recommendations and align your team to reality. Engineers and stakeholders like marketers are driven by metrics so quantitative usability report helps to provide objectivity to design debates.

Conclusion

Over the years, designers proved that Usability Testing is one of the UX technique that is essential to deliver an efficient product/service for users. It helps to figure out and solve the confusion, Errors while using a product or service. Stay tuned to know how Usability Testing can be done.