Benefits of Usability

Usability engineering provides important benefits in terms of cost, product quality and customer satisfaction. It can improve development productivity through more efficient design and fewer code revisions. It can help to eliminate over-design by emphasizing the functionality required to meet the needs of real users. Design problems can be detected earlier in the development process, saving both time and money. It can provide further cost savings through reduced support costs, reduced training requirements and greater user productivity. A usable product means more satisfied customers and a better reputation for the product and for the organization that developed it.

Today many leading corporations are incorporating usability engineering into their product development cycles. For them, usability is becoming a competitive advantage.

Usability Test of Your Product

A usability test is a formal evaluation process that has as its goal improvement of the usability of the product being tested. It differs from a quality assurance or quality test, which has as its goal assessing whether the product works according to specifications. It differs from a customer assurance test, a pilot test and a beta test because the usability test ensures the collection of systematic, recorded, quantifiable data and observation of behaviors.

A usability test has these five characteristics:

• Each test has specific goals and concerns that are tested.

• The participants represent real users (6 to 12 participants are typical).

• The participants do real tasks.

• The participants are observed and recorded.

• The data is analyzed, problems diagnosed and recommendations made.

A usability test consists of these activities

• Planning the test, developing participant’s profiles, identifying participants from user pool, creating test materials, writing task scenarios and determining usability criteria and measures.

• Preparing the test location, pilot testing materials and procedures.

• Introducing the participant to the situation, the product and the procedure.

• Running of the task-based test, where participants are asked to complete a series of tasks that address the specific goals and concerns being tested.

• Participants are asked to “think aloud” (articulate their thoughts, feeling and actions). This data and the recorded video images, helps target areas that are confusing, unclear or misleading during the analysis stage.

• Debriefing the participant to get final thoughts, subjective feelings about the product and suggestions for improvement.

• Analyzing the data, making recommendations and documenting findings.

Testing Your Project with end users that represent the end users of the final system. During the test, we can able to identify those areas of the system that will cause users to make errors, become less productive or be unable to complete a required activity.

The deliverable from a usability test is a report that details the problems encountered by the participants and recommendations for chance based on known human factors, cognitive and behavioral principles and recognized best practices.

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