All You Need to Know About Usability Tests: What, why, for what, when, how and what are the steps to make successful usability tests
What is usability?
According to usability.gov, it is the quality of the user's experience when interacting with products or systems, including websites, software, devices, or applications.
If something is “usable”, it means it works fine, and that someone with few skills and experience with the product can use it for its purpose without getting frustrated or facing obstacles.
Why Does a Product Need To Be Usable?
Digital interfaces, such as apps and websites, need to be usable. They must be usable. Usability translates into the permanence of users on a site, which then leads to commercial concepts, such as conversion, user experience, and user loyalty to a brand. On the contrary, non-usability only leads to drop-offs. Users exit the sites because they do not understand what they are supposed to do in it, because they cannot perform a task, or because they cannot make up a mistake. Therefore, the brand’s figures and finances turn negative. It is very likely that a user who had a bad experience with an interface may not use it again.
What Are Usability Tests?
Usability tests are run during a stage in which we assess and determine certain aspects of our product with real users. These tests focus on users’ behaviour when completing specific tasks, like buying a product, filling a form, etc.
Why Do We Run Them?
We run usability tests not only to measure and validate the efficacy of our actions on the interface, but also to ensure the usability of a product, which is crucial for its survival. If the product is hard to use, our brand competitor will develop an easy-to-use one.
What Is the Purpose of Running These Tests?
We run them to get feedback from users. Those comments allow us to improve and iterate the product to reach our main goal, which is to bring a good experience.
When Do We Run Them?
All the time. The best thing is to run these tests during the early stages of the creation of the project (formative design phase). By doing this, you can validate your idea from the beginning before using more resources. You also run them during the final stage (summative design stage) to prove real usability before launching it on the market.
Okay, But How Do We Run Them?
Depending on the context of its use, we can divide tests into the following:
- Natural tests try to reproduce real conditions in which a product is used, without providing any help or user support (like A/B tests).
- Written tests consist of assigning the user a list of tasks. These tests can be moderated, where we guide the user, or unmoderated, in person or remote.
- Hybrid tests combine natural and written tests.
Myths of usability tests
The expression “It takes a lot of money” is far from the truth. Probably, in the past, it was an expensive practice because you needed an equipped lab to run tests. Today, you just need a computer. In fact, you do not even need to be in the same place as the users, as you can run tests remotely. There are tools to do that, such as User Testing and UXCAM.
and UXCAM. “It takes a lot of time”. Running test takes way less than remaking changes once applied. On the contrary, avoiding running usability tests turns out to be expensive and time-consuming. Always run tests.
Steps to make successful usability tests:
- Define your goals, the purpose, and the users who are participating.
- Define metrics for your analytics, that is, the data you want to get.
- Define the type of test you are running, natural, written, moderated, etc.
- Create initial documentation. It will be useful for your report once the test is over.
- Define the tasks that you need the users to complete.
- Recruit participants. Ideal candidates are the ones who resemble your product users or proto-person.
- Conduct the test, welcome the participants, explain why you need their help, how you will use the information they give, etc. Add that to the task.
- Analyse the results, notes, and metrics you collected at the beginning to organise the information so you can study it and move to the next stage.
- Share recommendations with your team. In this last step, you need to share the conclusions and possible solutions to the problems that emerged from the test. These solutions do not need to be final. That may as well be an additional stage.
Before my final words, I share with you these Google Drive Sheets that may work as a foundation to create your own usability tests and document the process.
Always keep this quote in mind: “You are not your user”. Always test your product, always. If we work on UX without running tests with users, are we really working on UX?