Foundations of Usability Testing for IT Professionals – 2 Days

Summary

Students will come away from this training with a user-centered approach for testing the relevance and intuitiveness of desktop and mobile apps. You will learn how to identify usability issues and how to set up a study to explore these issues for redesign.

This class covers best practices for analyzing a user interface to pinpoint areas of concern, recruiting methods, moderating techniques, data collection and analysis, involving stakeholders and reporting on a usability study. You will gain exposure to common user experience/UX methods such as personas, “Day in the Life (DILO)” scenario scripting and heuristic review approaches for identifying study objectives. You will learn how to usability test a product at different points at different points in its lifecycle (e.g., concept, early prototype, released product), as well as when to leverage in-person, remote, or automated methods.

This class includes extensive hands-on practice. Each student will have the opportunity to develop their own usability study, moderate with a real participant and walk-through the steps of managing observers, data collection, analysis and synthesis.

Students will receive a workbook to serve as a reference as well as templates for plans, task lists, test scripts, recruiting screeners, and reports. The course material includes a detailed bibliography with information on where to learn more about this very practical method for improving the success quality of your interactive products.

Prerequisites

Duration

2 Days/Lecture & Lab

Audience

Front-end developers, Web designers, product managers, and others who are involved in the creation of interactive web sites and apps

Topics

• What is usability testing and when should you use it in your projects?
• What is the language of usability/User Experience?
• What are the planning steps in setting up a usability study?
• How do you approach evaluating the usability of an interactive product?
• What are the benefits of usability testing?
• How do you test a design at different stages of development (e.g., concept, under development, already released product?)
• What are the different types of usability tests, when is it appropriate to use each?
• How do you measure usability?
• How do you recruit the right participants for your studies?
• How do you create a task list to pinpoint specific usability issues?
• What kind of information do you collect during a session?
• How do you involve observers while maintaining control of the process?
• How do you analyze and synthesize the information collected during a session?
• What are some strategies for developing recommendations for redesign?
• How do you prioritize usability issues?
• How do you work with stakeholders to help them understand and accept the findings and gain their support?
• How does usability testing fit into methods such as “Design Thinking” and “Jobs to be Done”?
• How do you minimize bias in my study?
• What should go into a usability test report?
• Where can you learn more about usability and user experience after the class is over?

Related Scheduled Courses