Phases of Usability Testing
There are five phases in usability testing which are followed by the system when usability testing is performed. These are given below:
Phases of Usability Testing
- Prepare your product or design to test: The first phase of usability testing is choosing a product and then making it ready for usability testing. For usability testing, more functions and operations are required than this phase provided that type of requirement. Hence, this is one of the most significant phases in usability testing.
- Find your participants: The second phase of usability testing is finding an employee who is helping you with performing usability testing. Generally, the number of participants that you need is based on several case studies. Mostly, five participants can find almost as many usability problems as you’d find using many more test participants.
- Write a test plan: This is the third phase of usability testing. The plan is one of the first steps in each round of usability testing is to develop a plan for the test. The main purpose of the plan is to document what you are going to do, how you are going to conduct the test, what metrics you are going to find, the number of participants you are going to test, and what scenarios you will use.
- Take on the role of the moderator: This is the fourth phase of usability testing and here the moderator plays a vital role that involves building a partnership with the participant. Most of the research findings are derived by observing the participant’s actions and gathering verbal feedback to be an effective moderator, you need to be able to make instant decisions while simultaneously overseeing various aspects of the research session.
- Present your findings/ final report: This phase generally involves combining your results into an overall score and presenting it meaningfully to your audience. An easy method to do this is to compare each data point to a target goal and represent this as one single metric based on the percentage of users who achieved this goal.
Usability Testing – Software Engineering
You design a product (say a refrigerator) and when it becomes completely ready, you need a potential customer to test it to check it working. To understand whether the machine is ready to come on the market, potential customers test the machines. Likewise, the best example of usability testing is when the software also undergoes various testing processes which is performed by potential users before launching into the market. It is a part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Table of Content
- What is Usability Testing?
- Phases of Usability Testing:
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Usability Testing
- Why we Used Usability Testing?
- Factors Affecting Cost of Usability Testing
- Techniques and Methods of Usability Testing
- Conclusion