Part III - A Variety of Usability Research
Techniques
Usability research comes in many forms and
varieties. It can be as simple as "peer review" a
technique where the designer may ask a colleague, preferably
from another team or someone not associated with the
project, to comment on a design or section of a design with a
fresh attitude, right up to complex integrated testing of
for example, air traffic control systems with real flight
controllers.
As mentioned the simplest form of evaluation is that of peer
review. This could be very informal or could result in a more
formalised change management procedure. The next level of
testing might be that of a Usability Audit. In this type
of research a Usability Specialist would assess a
product against standard heuristics (or design rules of thumb)
some of these have been published by Jakob Neilson and can be
found on his site at www.useit.com. Usually a formal
report would then be written with recommendations so
improvements could be made to the product.
The most valuable form of research is user
observation. This is also the most common type and is
also referred to as usability testing or evaluation.
Neilson has determined, through research, that between 5
and 8 participants is the most cost effective number of
participants and our own research suggests 8 is the optimum
number. This is due to the law of diminishing returns. Users
should come from appropriate and previously outlined
demographics. They would then be placed in front of the product
and asked to complete given tasks that are representative of
those they would want to complete with the product in the real
world. The findings from the user observation would then be
complied into a report again with recommendations to improve the
product.
Next month we will consider the role of usability in
benchmarking performance...
Return to
newsletter |
