In my previous article I told you about such usability testing methods as Self-reporting logs and Thinking aloud protocol. The last most popular methods are Focus groups, Heuristic evaluation and Feature inspection. Let’s consider them.
In my previous article I told you about such usability testing methods as Surveys, Questionnaires and Pluralistic walkthroughs. This time, let’s talk about Self-reporting logs and Thinking aloud protocol.
Self-report logs are forms of “pencil-paper” type, in which users fix all actions and thoughts about interaction with application. This method is economical enough as experts are involved only in handling of results, without supervising action of the user in runtime of jobs.
In my previous article, I told you about such usability testing methods as Contextual inquiry, Checklists, Prototyping. This time, let’s talk about Surveys, Questionnaires and Pluralistic walkthroughs.
Survey is a special interview with the users, where they are given specially prepared questions, and their responses are recorded for further processing. The traditional reviews methodology may also play an important role in the study of application. Questions included in this review may vary depending on the purpose of the study, but are generally grouped into the following categories:
Contextual inquiry – a method of structured interviews, which differs from the ordinary, such as journalistic interview, because it has always been built on three basic principles:
- accounting for context in which the studied application is used.
- joint evaluation of the application by the user and the developer.
- focus of evaluation of the application is precisely on its user-friendliness.
Contextual inquiry is one of the alternatives of benchmark testing method, in which comfort is evaluated in the laboratory, not in a familiar user working environment. In the contextual inquiry job, time, motivation, and social factors that affect the user, are the same as in the real world, in contrast to laboratory studies where these factors are controlled by the experimenter.
What is usability testing?
Let’s define what usability testing is. There are some determinations. Here is one of them.
Usability testing is an experiment performed to determine how well people can use some artificial object (such as a Web page, user interface or device) for its intended use, i.e. usability testing measures the usability of an object.
Usability testing focuses on a specific object or a small set of objects, while the studies of human-computer interaction in general formulate universal principles.
First of all, I would like to say that I don’t consider myself to be an expert in usability testing and user interface design. But I want to share my knowledge and quite unpretending experience in these areas with others. That is why I’ve decided to write a series of articles about usability and usability testing. Maybe, somebody (or many) of you already know this information.
At the beginning I’ll tell you about history of usability, guidelines and standards of usability, definition and components of the concept of usability.So, let’s start.
What is usability?
Nowadays the software market is sated enough. A certain task can be solved by means of tens competing programs with almost identical functionality. Finally, the choice of this or that application more and more depends on nonfunctional characteristics. The user interface which provides simplicity and overall performance with a software product, can be of primary importance for making such a decision.