Usability & Usability Testing (Continued)
Articles and Resources for Usability and Usability Testing.
This is a continuation of Usability Resources.
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Page 2 of 3 Usability
Usability Articles
- 5-second tests: measuring your site's content pages Testing content pages to ensure that they are understandable to users. UIE, Christine Perfetti.
- 8 guidelines for usability testing Getting the most from usability testing sessions. Webcredible, Tim Fidgeon.
- 90% of all usability testing is useless Problems with usability testing for websites. Adaptive Path, Lane Becker.
- A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology This article summarizes the historical development of major advances in human-computer interaction technology, emphasizing the pivotal role of university research in the advancement of the field.
- A proposal for evaluating usability testing methods: the practical review system An outline of 28 characteristics that can be used to understand any usability method, thereby allowing any individual to decide between methods. WebWord, John S. Rhodes.
- Archiving usability reports The need to systematically archive the reports. An intranet-based usability archive offers four substantial benefits. Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen
- Authentic behavior in user testing Reasons why user testing generates realistic findings because people engage strongly with the tasks and suspend their disbelief. Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen.
- Beginner's guide to moderating a usability study Considerations and steps to take when I'm moderating a usability test. OK/Cancel, Kevin Cheng.
- Checkpoints for reviewing usability test reports Checkpoints to help in critically reviewing the research of others, and to help stakeholders weigh up the merits or shortcomings of research data and conclusions. UPA, Kathleen Straub.
- Cleaning up for the housekeeper The need for both Expert Review and Usability Testing because they address different goals. DialogDesign, Rolf Molich.
- Comparative usability evaluation A series of studies where large numbers of professional usability teams evaluated the same website or Windows program. Usability.gov.
- Conducting and using usability tests A good set of steps for conduction a usability test plus links to more articles. Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center (ITTATC), Shawn Lawton Henry and Mary Martinson Grossnickle.
- Cost of User Testing a Website It takes 39 hours to usability test a website the first time you try. This time estimate includes planning the test, defining test tasks, recruiting test users, conducting a test with five users, analyzing the results, and writing the report. Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen.
- Design choices can cripple a website An examination of how page is design will have a dramatic impact on conversion rates for better or for worse. A List Apart, Nick Usborne.
- Eight guidelines for usability testing A paper about how you can get the most from these usability testing sessions. Usability News, Tim Fidgeon.
- Estimating of testing the plausible way How to estimate the time needed for a usability test. Usability News, Caroline Jarrett.
- Experience remote usability testing, Part 1 A context for remote usability testing by detailing and describing the benefits and pitfalls of remote usability evaluations and the application-sharing tools that were evaluated. IBM, Velda Bartek and Deane Cheatham.
- Experience remote usability testing, Part 2 The authors describe some of the lessons learned as they planned and conducted remote usability evaluations for software products. IBM, Velda Bartek and Deane Cheatham.
- Eyetracking studies: usability holy grail? Eye-tracking, while valuable, doesn't make usability testing any more powerful. It's what you do with the observations and the usability test data that counts. Demistifying Usability, Frank Spiller.
- Finding the right users A more scientific approach to selecting usability testing subjects. Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz.
- Fly on the wall The "Fly on the Wall" (FOTW) technique is a low-cost, low-overhead method of collecting valid customer data. IBM, Eyitope St. Matthew-Daniel and Robert J. Kamper.
- Formal usability reports vs quick findings Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice. Alert Box, Jakob Nielsen.
- Get out of your lab and into their lives A discussion about how standard user testing practice is remarkably out of sync with reality. Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz.
- Guerilla facilitation There are papers about the "right" way to facilitate. Consider these thoughts my first attempt at what I'll call "Guerilla Facilitation." UPA Voice, Ronnie Battista.
- Hotspots and hyperlinks: using eye-tracking to supplement usability testing This article discusses how eye-tracking can be used to supplement traditional usability test measures. Usability News, Mark C. Russell.
- Iterative Usability Testing as Continuous Feedback: A Control Systems Perspective This paper argues that in the field of usability, debates about number of users, the use of statistics, etc. in the abstract are pointless and even counter-productive. Journal of Usability Studies, Alex Genov.
- Measuring online experience: it's about more than time In order to obtain a more robust measure of Internet use, researchers may want to consider how and what users think, feel, and do online when they assess level of experience. This article explores each of these areas and present a new measure of measuring online experience. Usability News, Bonnie Lida Rogers.
- One-Day Usability Testing 80 percent of what you would learn from these studies can be gained in less than a day. Search Engine Watch, Aaron Hurst.
- Planning usability testing for accessibility This paper discusses "How many participants with disabilities should be included in usability testing?" and "What characteristics should they have?" The Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center (ITTATC).
- Practical usability: beyond user testing Even a knowledgeable audience may not know that there is a lot more to usability than user testing. Digital Web, Joshua Kaufman.
- Preparing usability testing for accessibility A set of tasks for preparing for usability testing. The Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center (ITTATC).
- Pitting usability testing against heuristic review When to use usability testing vs. heuristic review. Human Factors International, Eric Schaffer.
- Recruiting screener: questions for usability test participants with disabilities Template questions that you can customize and add to your recruiting screener to cover disability and accessibility issues. Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen.
- Remote online usability testing: why, how, and when to use it Remote online testing versus traditional usability testing. Traditional, one-on-one usability testing in person is a great technique for uncovering usability issues on your website. Boxes and Arrows, Dabney Gough and Holly Phillips.
- Restoring confidence in usability results Adding confidence intervals to completion rates in usability tests will temper both excessive skepticism and overstated usability findings. Measuring Usability, Jeff Sauro.
- Seven common usability testing mistakes How to avoid mistakes and ensure that the usability test will produce quality results. UIE, Jared M. Spool.
- Standards update: usability test reporting Inconsistancy between usability professionals when conducting usability tests. Userfocus, David Travis.
- Test Your Designs - on People! How can you know that the design you've stressed over for so long is appropriate? Feedback is one way - paying attention to the email you get from people who take the time to write. But a more powerful solution is actually watching people use your site. Webmonkey, Jeffrey Veen.
- Time budgets for usability sessions Up to 40% of precious testing time is wasted while users engage in nonessential activities. Far better to focus on watching users perform tasks with the target interface design. Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen.
- Towards the design of effective formative test reports A discussion about "formative" evaluations to distinguish them from "summative" (validation) usability tests at the end of development. Journal of Usability Studies, Mary Theofanos and Whitney Quesenbery.
- UI guidelines vs usability testing This paper defines UI guidelines and describes the problems inherent in only following guidelines, as well as the danger in being too focused on consistency in your design. Microsoft Corporation.
- Usability at 90mph: presenting and evaluating a new high-speed method for demonstrating user testing in front of an audience This article documents the authors' attempt to develop a quick, inexpensive, and reliable method for demonstrating user testing to an audience. First Monday, Paul F Marty and Michael B Twidale.
- User Testing How to find out what users want The most successful web sites are those that not only respond to user feedback, but actively seek it out. ahref.com, Jennifer Fleming.
- What's in a number? Whereas 7 (plus or minus 2) is the mantra for structured writing and other methods for organizing information, 5 (plus or minus 2) is the mantra for the number of participants needed in a usability test. STC Usability, Carol M. Barnum.
- When to Outsource the Recruiting of Test Users When your user population is relatively small and well defined, you have to recruit from those people, schedule their time, etc. Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen.
- Why ask "why" in a usability evaluation In this evaluation of a University web site, users were asked to attempt tasks and at each step were instructed to indicate not only what action they intended perform, but why that particular action seemed appropriate. UPA, Larry Wood.
- Why you don't need a usability lab To simulate a normal office environment, and find out how real users are experiencing your site. If that's the goal, then here's a modest suggestion: why not use your participants' actual office environments? Sitepoint, Elizabeth Neal.
- Why you only need to test with 5 users Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford. Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen.
- Why You Need to Test Your Web Site with Real Users Consultants, marketing and Web development people have their own biased views of what users want or need. But only users can really tell you whether your site meets their requirements. WebReference, Lois Wakeman.
- Why User Testing Is Good You have to find out what your customers want before you finish your product. In fact, the earlier you find out what people want, the better. Webmonkey, Mike Kuniavsky.
Usabilitiy Blogs
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