On 10 November it was World Usability Day. It may have passed you by, but that’s okay because we all know usability is for life not just for World Usability Day! So, by way of belated celebration, I’d like to share with you my advice on how to carry out user testing.
What’s involved?
Sometimes you can be working so closely on a web project that it’s easy to fall into the trap of familiarity. The challenge is to keep focused on the project’s goals and audience. When it comes to developing a website the end user needs to be kept at the forefront, and one way to check this is through user testing.
Getting users to test drive your website will save you potentially unveiling an unusable site come launch day. User testing is an eye-opening experience, you’ll be amazed at what the testing reveals – a fresh pair of eyes, impartiality and honesty can make a real difference – and you’re on your way to building a more user-friendly website.
In a nutshell, user testing works like this:
- You plan your testing – creating scenarios/tasks
- You round up a small sample of users, 5 should do it
- You ask each of them to separately attend a session, either remotely or in a one-on-one testing environment
- You ask them to perform certain tasks on a prototype of your site and record what they do, how they navigate, where they get stuck, etc
- You take a look at the results and fix the problem areas
- You re-test on a further 5 users.
This doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise either. Sure, you can hire specialists and labs, use eye-trackers and screen capture software, but it can be just as effective using a simple set up with a PC and a moderator asking the questions and someone to take notes. If you do have a bit more budget to give to this, and it is a worthwhile way to spend the money allotted to the project, it’s nice to have video of the sessions to play to the project team back at HQ.
How do you find people to participate?
It depends on who you want to test on. If you want to test users who most frequently use your website then invite those along that regularly log in to the site or who click through from your e-newsletters.
Perhaps you might want to consider those who aren’t that engaged, maybe even people who’ve never used your website? Both types offer different perspectives so both are useful for different reasons, but that’s up to you to decide.
It helps if you can provide an incentive, such as shopping vouchers. Be sure to let them know how long the session will take – typically this would be about an hour.
If you plan on testing remotely, using online software that records audio/video of the user’s computer screen (screencast) while they interact with your website, the suppliers that carry out this service can also provide testers based on your target demographics.
How to get started
Come up with user personas for the main types of users of your site. Describe what type of person they are and what they are interested in and this should help you develop the scenarios – why they would be coming to the site. It could be something like this: you are a VIP member of the website and you are aware that this membership entitles you to additional content locked away in a members’ only area – how would you go about accessing it?
Set tasks that are necessary for the site to be successful, such as making a purchase, registering, finding a product or more information, making contact, etc.
Before you start any testing, check over your site. Familiarity numbs the senses so make sure there’s no obvious usability problems and do a run through of the tasks yourself to make sure the finish line is achievable.
Things to remember during the testing
- Try to make your user as relaxed as if they were browsing the web on their own PC and make sure there aren’t any distractions.
- Gather some background info on the user before you start the test – ask them how often they use the site, what sites they use frequently, favourite sites, etc.
- Remind them that they are not being evaluated, that you are testing the website and not them.
- Encourage them to be frank. Ask them to talk aloud through their tasks, get them to talk about their impressions, expectations, and the motivations for their actions.
- Send them back to the homepage between each task so they can start afresh.
- Sit beside the user but at an angle so that you can see their screen, this will make the user feel more at ease and enable them to turn and talk to you – it can be off-putting to sit behind them.
- If you are taking notes, take lots, but keep your eyes on what they are doing.
- Expect users to apologise when they can’t find things. Remind them that they are just being observed and don’t prompt, coach or correct them. If they struggle to find something you can rephrase the question. If that fails, don’t leave them continuing to look in vain. Tell them the outcome you were hoping for, but make sure they understand that they’ve not made an error.
- Note if users are spending too much time reading text. This might be an indication that there’s too much of it on your site!
- Don’t explain away the problems identified.
- Note down the words/phrases used to describe sections/content – it might be useful when it comes to labelling navigation or functionality. For instance, we picked up in one session that users preferred the term ‘resource’ to ‘knowledge’ because ‘knowledge’ suggested academia rather than practical guidance.
- If you ask them to rate the site out of 10 remember that a high score might not mean much if they had difficulty finding their way around during the testing – rely more on what they do than what they say.
- Don’t forget to thank them and give them an incentive at the session. Let them know when the site will be live as they’ll be interested to know if their input has been of use – which, of course, it has!
User Testing Terminology:
Card sorting – another useful task you can do remotely which can be done before user testing. It offers a way of finding out how users would expect to find content. Users are asked to organise navigational items into categories which make sense to them. Traditionally this is done using index cards and having people arrange them, but it’s easier to perform this using online software so it can be done remotely.
User persona – a fictional representation of a user type, drawn up to give an idea of the motivations, attitudes, behaviours, preferences and skills of a particular user.
If you need help carrying out user testing, contact us to find out what we can offer.
Suzy Brown led the development for the runningsports and sports coach UK websites that won Interactive Media Awards in 2009 and 2011. The sports coach UK website picked up two ‘Best in Class’ awards in the ‘Sports’ and ‘Charity’ categories and the runningsports website, the ‘Outstanding Achievement’ award for non-profit websites.
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