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Test & Refine |
Conduct the Usability Test
- What happens in a typical usability test session?
- What makes a good test facilitation?
- Treating participants with care
- Staying neutral
- Deciding when and how much to help
- Taking good notes
What happens in a typical usability test session?
Here is what happens in a typical one-hour usability test session:
- The facilitator:
- welcomes the participant and introduces anyone else who is in the room
- invites the participant to sit in front of the computer where the participant will be working
- explains the general goal of the session—to have the participant try out a Web site (or whatever the product is that is being tested)
- asks participant profile questions and has the participant sign the release form
- explains thinking aloud (and may demonstrate it and have the participant do a think aloud exercise)
- asks if the participant has any questions before starting and answers any that will not give away what you want to learn from the participant
- tells the participant where to start
- The participant starts to work with the Web site (or other product). The facilitator may ask some initial questions or give the first scenario (whatever you have planned).
- The participant works on the scenario while thinking aloud. The note-takers take notes.
- The session continues from scenario to scenario until the participant has done (or tried) them all or the time allotted has elapsed.
- The facilitator asks the end-of-session questions and then thanks the participant, giving the participant the agreed-on incentive, and escorts the participant out.
What makes a good test facilitation?
Review the following section to learn more about how to properly facilitate a usability test.
Treating participants with care
The most important thing to remember is to take good care of participants. Make them comfortable. Treat them with respect.
They are helping you by trying out the prototype of your product. They may struggle. Indeed, the reality of usability testing is that you watch a few people struggle so that the many, many people who will use the site later will not have to struggle.
Staying neutral
You must also remember to remain neutral. You are there to listen and watch, not to demonstrate the site; not to train or teach; not to say either negative or positive things about the site. Your only talk should be to encourage the participant to think aloud. If the participant asks a question, reply with something like "What do you think?" or "I'm interested in what you would do."
Deciding when and how much to help
You also cannot jump in and help participants immediately. Watching participants try to figure out how to do tasks is what usability testing is all about.
If the participant gives up and asks for help, you must decide whether to end the scenario, give a hint, or give more substantial help. The key is to make the participant comfortable while not giving away information that might change what will happen in later scenarios. Remember you will not be at the desk or in the home of the users who get the product outside of the usability test. A good solution is often to say, "Thank you for what you have done. We have learned a lot from that. Let's go on to a different task."
One of the decisions that you and the team should make in planning is how much of a hint you will give in each situation and how long you will allow participants to work on a scenario when they are clearly going down an unproductive path. If you stop participants too soon, you will have learned little about their way of thinking about the site. If you let them go on too long, they may not get to other scenarios that you also want to learn about.
Taking good notes
Note-takers should capture what the participant did in as much specific detail as possible.
If you have put the optimal path and alternative pathways into the note-taking form, note-takers can just check off what participants do when the participants act as expected. When participants do not take one of the expected pathways, however, it is most useful to note exactly what they do.
Useful note: Clicked on link to Research instead of Clinical Trials.
Not useful note: Clicked on wrong link.
Not useful note: Was confused about links
The explicit note gives us information about the participants' view of the site.
Note-takers should also capture insightful comments that participants make. Note-takers should try to capture what participants say in the participants' words. One of the benefits you get from watching and listening to users is to hear the words they use for what they are trying to do.
Even if you are tape recording the sessions, it would be very time consuming to go back to the tape to do a detailed analysis after the sessions. The more and better notes you take during the sessions, the easier analysis will be.
It is important to note that some usability testing tools will log some of this data for you, including users' paths, time on task, number of pages viewed, task completion rate, satisfaction scenes, and more.
Next steps
When you have conducted the usability test sessions, you will be ready to Analyze the Results.
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