31/36 - 🚀 A Deep Dive into Product Usability
Usability studies transform assumptions into insights, making the user's voice the most valuable asset in design.
What is Usability Testing?
Usability testing is the process of testing your product with real people by getting them to complete a list of tasks while observing and noting their interactions. The goal of conducting usability testing is to understand if your design is usable and intuitive enough for users to accomplish their goals.
“It’s about catching customers in the act, and providing highly relevant and highly contextual information.” — Paul Maritz, CEO at Pivotal
Purpose of usability
Product teams can run usability tests to gain many types of data about their products. But most teams use these tests to learn the following:
Ease of use: Is the solution straightforward, self-explanatory, and easy to learn?
Efficiency: Are users able to complete each task with a minimum amount of time or clicks?
User-friendliness: When a user has trouble figuring out the next action or where to find a feature, does the system offer real-time help? And is this form of assistance itself easy to locate and use?
Benefits of Usability Testing
Usability testing lets the design and development teams identify problems before they are coded. The earlier issues are identified and fixed, the less expensive the fixes will be in terms of both staff time and possible impact on the schedule. During a usability test, you will:
Learn if participants are able to complete specified tasks successfully and
Identify how long it takes to complete specified tasks
Find out how satisfied participants are with your Web site or other product
Identify changes required to improve user performance and satisfaction
And analyze the performance to see if it meets your usability objectives
When to use
Usability testing can be done throughout the product development lifecycle. Ideally, this is started early to test the flows of wireframes and prototypes, and is continued through each iteration.
How Do You Conduct Usability Testing?
A useful usability test requires only a small group of participants.
For an overview of the steps involved in implementing a usability test, here is a suggested breakdown from a research paper published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. According to that paper, running a usability test involves five stages:
Planning the usability test This stage should output a document describing the test’s goals and methodology, how the team will choose participants, what the working procedure will be, the types of data the team wants to collect, and the like.
Recruiting participants This stage includes deciding who your ideal participants will be, developing a detailed recruiting questionnaire, and determining a plan of action to begin seeking and evaluating participants.
Preparing test materials prep helps you to decide what actions you’ll want participants to take within your product, and the types of outcome you’re working toward. Then you will need to design the test environment (which could be remote or in-person at your offices).
Setting up the test environment For this stage, you will need to design the actual environment where you will be conducting your tests. Usability test methods include lab testing (in-person at your offices) and remote testing (where participants can log in to your test from anywhere). You will need to choose which type of test makes sense for your team’s goals and needs.
Conducting the test Here you will run your usability test with your participants. One tip offered in the IEEE paper is to conduct dry-run tests beforehand with your team. Dry-run tests are a good way to learn ahead of time if there will be any problems in collecting and recording data. It is also an opportunity to uncover any issues with your product before your participants do.
Analyzing the data Here your team will study all data gathered from your usability test to glean critical insights and actionable intelligence on how to improve your product’s usability.
Reporting the results Finally, you will share your usability tests’ findings with relevant stakeholders across your team, to earn buy-in to proceed with your suggested improvements.
Usability Testing Script & Questions
Following one script or even a template of questions for every one of your usability studies wouldn't make any sense -- each study's subject matter is different. You'll need to tailor your questions to the things you want to learn, but most importantly, you'll need to know how to ask good questions.
1. When you [action], what's the first thing you do to [goal]?
Questions such as this one give insight into how users are inclined to interact with the tool and what their natural behavior is.
Julie Fischer, one of HubSpot's Senior UX researchers, gives this advice: "Don't ask leading questions that insert your own bias or opinion into the participants' mind. They'll end up doing what you want them to do instead of what they would do by themselves."
For example, "Find [x]" is a better than "Are you able to easily find [x]?" The latter inserts connotation that may affect how they use the product or answer the question.
2. How satisfied are you with the [attribute] of [feature]?
Avoid leading the participants by asking questions like "Is this feature too complicated?" Instead, gauge their satisfaction on a Likert scale that provides a number range from highly unsatisfied to highly satisfied. This will provide a less biased result than leading them to a negative answer they may not otherwise have had.
3. How do you use [feature]?
There may be multiple ways to achieve the same goal or utilize the same feature. This question will help uncover how users interact with a specific aspect of the product and what they find valuable.
4. What parts of [the product] do you use the most? Why?
This question is meant to help you understand the strengths of the product and what about it creates raving fans. This will indicate what you should absolutely keep and perhaps even lead to insights into what you can improve for other features.
5. What parts of [the product] do you use the least? Why?
This question is meant to uncover the weaknesses of the product or the friction in its use. That way, you can rectify any issues or plan future improvements to close the gap between user expectations and reality.
6. If you could change one thing about [feature] what would it be?
Because it's so similar to #5, you may get some of the same answers. However, you'd be surprised about the aspirational things that your users might say here.
7. What do you expect [action/feature] to do?
Here's another tip from Julie Fischer:
"When participants ask 'What will this do?' it's best to reply with the question 'What do you expect it do?' rather than telling them the answer."
Doing this can uncover user expectations as well as clarity issues with the copy.
Usability Test Script
