Nate Bolt writes about the pros and cons of remote usability testing. To quote: n-person user research used to be the only game in town, and as with most industry practices, its procedures were developed, refined, standardized, and then became entrenched in the corporate R&D product development cycle. Practically everything ...
Articles tagged: usability testing
8 tips for making ambush ‘guerilla user testing’ clip reel videos
Martin Belam has written a followup post on creating "guerilla user testing" videos. To quote: Yesterday I posted my 10 tips for ambush 'guerilla user testing'. Once you've got some footage of people using your website, you need to find the best way to present that back to the business. ...
10 tips for ‘ambush guerilla user testing’
Martin Belam has written a post on "ambush guerilla user testing". To quote: Over the last couple of years I've been practicing 'ambush guerilla user testing', which is basically the art of pouncing on lone people in cafes and public spaces, and quickly filming them whilst they use a website ...
Debunking the myths of online usability testing
Bill Albert explores the practicalities of online usability testing. To quote: The motivation for this article is to help UX researchers keep an open mind about online usability testing. There are some researchers who have been using this approach for years and find it useful (in certain situations). Others are ...
Tree testing: a quick way to evaluate your IA
Dave Obrien has posted details on tree testing, a mechanism for evaluating a draft information architecture. To quote: As we started experimenting with “card-based classification” on paper, it became clear that, while the technique was simple, it was tedious to create the cards on paper, recruit participants, record the results ...
Inexpensive ways to target problem areas
Todd Elliott has written an article on remote usability techniques. To quote: Until fairly recently, when designers wanted to test an idea or design, they sought out an outside usability agency or, rented a room, some expensive equipment and recruited users to come into an artificial environment to participate in ...
Some testing is better than none
Ideally, all intranet design projects should adopt a design approach which consults with users throughout the process, from identifying needs to input and evaluation of structure and design. This is not always possible. Time and cost limitations occasionally result in corners being cut with testing often being the victim, because ...
Relaunch of usability.gov
I heard on the grapevine recently that usability.gov has been refreshed and relaunched. This is a superb resource that every web and intranet designer should know about. To quote: Usability.gov is a one-stop source for government web designers to learn how to make websites more usable, useful, and accessible. The ...
Stop calling it usability testing
Patrick Kennedy writes about the confusion surrounding usability testing. To quote: The term “usability testing” often gets misconstrued by technical types, project managers and business analysts. It gets turned into a stale, rigid, bureaucratic affair. The old “unit, integration, system” mantra. It’s done as a matter of course, at the ...
Asking participants to “pretend” in user studies
Jared Spool has written about the dangers of getting users to pretend during usability testing. To quote: One of the places we kept noticing this was when we watching people shop online. Asking a shopper to pretend to purchase (“Could you find a pair of shoes you might like to ...
Quick turnaround usability testing
Paul Nuschke writes about quick turnaround usability testing techniques. To quote: It starts with any number of scenarios: Design and development have taken too long to produce a prototype, you need to release in three weeks, and you suspect there may be design flaws. You are trying to incorporate usability ...
