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

There are no prerequisites for this course.

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?

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