The Best Usability Test
Users get a lot of flak, both deserved and otherwise. Sometimes, it’s really easy to blame the user for making mistakes on application features or websites that you’ve developed. However, they are your users, and you need to accommodate them. Luckily, there’s a really easy way to do this. First, though, some preamble.
Users are Predictable
80% of users will make the same subset of mistakes for all the same reasons, almost every time. The remaining 10% are either relative experts like us, or completely computer-illiterate technophobes — neither of which is likely to be your target audience.
These are the users that usability tests are designed to help you with. It doesn’t even have to be a formal usability test in a controlled setting, either - just having someone other than yourself, the person who designed the thing you’re testing and knows it inside-out, is an enormous step, and an essential part of the process for creating any interface, be it a website or an operating system - or, for that matter, a telephone or an F-16 cockpit. Furthermore, since 80% of users are more or less alike, it’s easy to find someone appropriate to volunteer.
Usability is Essential
If the user can’t find the product, the sale is lost. If the user can’t find the appropriate information about the product, the sale is lost. If the user can’t figure out how to add the product to the cart, check out, pay, arrange for shipping, and then confirm their order, the sale is lost. The same applies to an application — if the user can’t use it, they won’t. Usability is arguably the most important aspect of a successful website/application.
The Solution
So we’ve established the usability incredibly important, but also remarkably simple to gauge. What does this mean?
Fifteen minutes spent watching your mom use your interface can be worth thousands of dollars in the long run.
Your mom is the ideal user for you to test on. Why? Because 1) she’s probably a good demographic, an average user on the lower end of the bellcurve in terms of computing ability, and 2) because if your mother gets stuck checking out, you’re not going to dismiss that as an idiotic user mistake and forget about it.
Don’t listen to what she says, she’s biased. Instead, just watch her use the interface. Take note of which screens she spends a minute or two clicking around, trying to find an escape. Write down when and where she gets stuck. Watch what she does, and you’ll be rewarded.
Budget for Testing
Try this: for every project, budget an hour or two for testing, and use it to take your mother, or someone else you know who fits the typical-user bill, out to dinner in exchange for their valuable input. Make sure it’s someone who you can’t possibly just gloss over as a simpleton, this is important. As put by advertising maven David Ogilvy: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”
Plus, I bet she’d really like to see you.