This week’s lecture concentrated on a part of the design process we hadn’t really covered up to now, but that is vital for the success of any product; user testing. User testing can be expensive and challenging although we looked at some ways that can make the cost less and the simple fact that testing with one user is better than none means that any user testing will provide useful feedback. User testing is a hugely practical part of the design process with interaction with people from your target audience, it offers the chance to gain insights into the needs and motivations of that audience as well as finding out if any assumptions you made throughout the design process were correct.
While this week’s lecture was very thorough, I still wanted to look online and gain more information and knowledge about usability testing. I wanted to see what tips I could find for when I carry out my own user tests.
I started by looking at a piece titled “Usability 101” on the Nielsen Norman Group website (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/) having read books by Don Norman and the fact that the usability heuristics we looked at last week were written by Jakob Nielsen the two founders of this business the Nielsen Norman Group is one of my go-to places when I am looking to learn more.
This particular piece is an overview of usability testing and covers all the basics, why you do it, who is involved and some basics about how to conduct a usability test. I liked this graphic about the reasons to do usability testing.
Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/ (Last Accessed 04/01/24)
However as most of what is covered here was also covered in our lecture, I decided to dive a bit deeper and look at the articles listed as further reading.
As I was most interested in how I might go about doing a usability study of my own I selected an article on the “Thinking Aloud” method of usability testing as this seems to be a good method to start with. Here is the article: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/thinking-aloud-the-1-usability-tool/
Jakob Nielsen defines the thinking aloud usability test like this:
“In a thinking aloud test, you ask test participants to use the system while continuously thinking out loud — that is, simply verbalizing their thoughts as they move through the user interface.”
Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/thinking-aloud-the-1-usability-tool/ (Last Accessed 04/01/24)
It sounds simple when it is put like that and in essence it is, you simply provide the interface you want to test to sample users, set them some realistic tasks and ask them to verbalise their thoughts as they complete the task. However, the issue is that people do not naturally talk through their thoughts as they complete tasks and this is one of the potential problems with the thinking aloud method, you need to convince and ensure your users to keep talking throughout the task and not to stop. Other potential risks of using this method pointed out in this article include people filtering their responses rather than giving you their raw thoughts and facilitators introducing bias into the test by their questions or other behaviour.
People are naturally going to filter their responses if they think saying something may make them appear foolish, they aren’t going to say it. However, in this type of test we want people to say whatever comes into their head, if they can’t understand the interface or are not able to find something they are looking for within it, then that is a design problem and one that we as designers want to know about and fix. Convincing people that we are testing the interface not them might be a challenge, but this is what we need to do to get the best results.
Creating bias within the test as a facilitator is something that would be quite easy to do, there are several well-known behaviours that psychologists have found that everybody does to avoid confrontation or upsetting someone. As someone completing a usability test will know you are involved in the product, they won’t want to say anything that might upset or offend you. People also want to well when they are completing a task so if something a facilitator says makes them think they should be doing something differently a user will likely alter their behaviour. This is something a facilitator must be aware of and not fall into the trap of doing, they must keep their questions and behaviour neutral to get the best results from the test. Otherwise, useful insights and suggestions might be missed.
There are lots of advantages to the thinking aloud method from its low cost, that it is robust to some mistakes in methodology, its flexibility and its power to convince other stakeholders in the project of the need for change with the views of real users.
These advantages are why I believe thinking aloud will be the first usability test I conduct and now that I am aware of the disadvantages, I can take steps to mitigate these before carrying out the test optimising my results.
Usability testing is a key part of the design process and the reasons for completing usability test are clear from the graphic above. It will be an important skill for me to develop as I start my career as a designer and I look forward to the opportunity to facilitate usability tests on some of my designs soon. I feel this will help me improve my designs and make me more aware of user needs and motivations.