Information Culture: Week 8: Usabilitiy

1. Usability Testing

2. Importance of Usability
• Consumer can use your site more easily and will
come back more often
• Less frustrating and more enjoyable experience
• Increase in sales
• Decrease in support costs
• Increase in employee productivity and decrease
in employee frustration
• Fewer mistakes

3. Usability Principles
• Use your audience’s language and labels
• Make navigation, layout, graphics simple and
consistent
• Provide help information
• Make sure the organization and presentation of
the site reflects user’s needs and goals
• Design should reinforce easy task flows
• Use logical and organized information groupings

4. Benefits of Testing
• Real world/ real user perspective
• Identifies the majority of the functionality
issues
• Allows testers to see the user’s decision
making process and the amount of time spent
on different areas of the website

5. Types of Tests
• Exploratory (Formative Study)
– Conducted early in the development cycle when a product is still in the preliminary stages of
being defined and designed.
– Main objective is to examine the effectiveness of preliminary design concepts.
• Can the user navigate from screen to screen
• Can the user complete the tasks needed to reach their goal
• Assessment Test (Summative Test)
– Conducted midway into the development cycle after the fundamental design and organization
of the site has been established.
– Purpose of the test is to see how well a user can perform realistic tasks and identify problems
in the usability of the site.
• Validation Test (Verification Test)
– Conducted late in the development cycle.
– Intended to measure the usability of a product against established benchmarks or to confirm
that problems discovered earlier have been remedied
• Comparison Test
– Compare two or more design interface styles or to compare your site with a competitor’s.

6. Example of a test plan
• Purpose
• Participants
– Participant Questionnaire
• Methodology
• Script
– Introduction
– Pre Test Value Questionnaire
– Familiarization
– Task Scenarios
– Wrap Up
– Post Test Questionnaire

7. Google Redesign
• Google calls it a “simpler, cleaner design”
• Creates a consistent search experience across devices
• Focuses on the user getting the answers they are looking for whether
through the website search results or Knowledge Graph
• Google has invited users to provide feedback on their Google+ page

8. Resources
• Rubin, Jeff and Chisnell, Dana. Handbook of Usability
Testing, Second Edition. Wiley Publishing, 2008
• Summers, Kathryn. Usability Testing, 2010
• Soper, Taylor. Google redesigns search results interface: What do
you think?, GeekWire, November 7, 2012
• Spiffing up your search results page, Inside Search: The Official
Google Search Blog, November 6, 2012