Amazon reviews. Goodreads reviews. There is some overlap, because Think also explains what usability testing is and why you should do it. But the books are really very different. You might even end up buying copies for them to read. The book focuses mostly on testing Web sites a to keep it short and uncomplicated, and b because when I wrote it in web sites were much more widely used than apps. But the same method can be used to improve almost anything that people use. My point is that almost all amateurs can do a good job good enough to be very valuable , and there are rarely enough professionals available to do as much testing as is needed.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy. The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. So, what keeps people from doing it? I wrote this book to show just how easy it is Rocket Surgery is a how-to book for doing your own usability tests. Who should read it? Developer and designers who want to improve their own work by doing some informal testing. UX professionals interested in doing leaner testing. Product managers who want their teams to do more testing. Where to buy it. English Amazon. Try before you buy. Some participants will run into more problems and spark more insights, some less, but on average you can expect to learn a lot from each one. Because watching the demo test is important. I wanted to make sure you do it. It uncovers as many problems as you can actually fix. And it keeps you focused on fixing the most important problems first. Basically, it amounts to doing a round of testing once a month, with three users.

On testing day, you do three tests in the morning and then debrief over lunch. See page Limiting the testing to half a day—which means testing with only three users—simplifies recruiting and means that more people can come and watch. Do-it-yourself vs. Recruit carefully to find people who are like your target audience Recruit loosely, if necessary WHERE DO YOU TEST? Held off-site, in a rented facility with an observation room with a one-way mirror Held on-site, with observers in any conference room using screen sharing software to watch WHO WATCHES? Well, no, not really; not all of it. The first time you do it, expect to spend at least two or three full days making all the preparations. For subsequent rounds, though, you should be able to whittle this down to two days, or even one. Can I do it more often than once a month?

A morning a month is just the minimum. The important thing, though, is not to do it less than once a month. A morning a month? Ah, yes. But other than that, the process is pretty much the same. Everything they write is assumed to be working code. Does it have to be a morning? For instance, for some types of participants, it may be difficult for them to attend during work hours, so you might do tests at 6 pm, 7 pm, and 8 pm providing dinner for the observers to encourage attendance and then do the debriefing the next day over breakfast or lunch. The samples are way too small to even bother with statistics.

The worst practice is the most common one: waiting to test until the site is done and ready to launch. Unfortunately, professionals also know that people resist the idea of testing early. Yes, users will come across problems that you already know about, but there will also be surprises. Your natural instinct will be to wait, which is the worst thing you can do. Throughout any project your team is going to be producing design artifacts: rough sketches, wireframes, page comps, working prototypes, and more. HOW YOU TEST IT: Follow the process spelled out in Chapters 5 through 9. You may even want to go ahead and fix some of the worst problems you discover.

They may belong to your competitors or they may just be sites that have the same kind of content or the same kinds of users as you. Most people overlook this opportunity, but it can save you an enormous amount of work. Give people the key tasks you test on your site. For a Web site, you might have a sketch of a new Home page or a product page, for instance. Each one takes less than five minutes. You can do napkin tests using friends, neighbors, or anyone you run into, or you can do them where your actual users gather, like a trade show or a user group meeting. Approach almost anyone. Take a look at this?

Hand them the napkin. It could be a nice neat drawing, or it could actually be a sketch on a napkin. What do you think this is supposed to be? Listen carefully. And these things over here are your featured products. The whole design of the book was going to be like a bird watching book: the same size and shape, and the same look and feel. I thought it was a great idea. I loved it. Just thinking about it made me happy. I kept a rough version of the cover on the wall near my 1 desk for inspiration. They all thought that it would be a book about all the different kinds of Web users. I knew how it was supposed to work. Testing wireframes After sketches, the usual next step in Web design is creating wireframes. A wireframe is essentially a schematic diagram of a page. Typically, it shows where different kinds of content will go, the relative prominence of things like headings, and the navigation devices like menus and search.

Is it clear how the navigation is supposed to work? You may find, [ 36 ] what do you test, and when do you test it? Testing page designs Typically, a Web site has a few unique pages like the Home page and a series of templates like section front pages, article pages, and product pages that are repeated throughout the site with different content. Where wireframes focus on interaction, comps focus on the visual design. HOW YOU TEST IT: Starting with the Home pages, you lead them by the hand through comps and ask them to do a narrative page 75 of each one.

WHAT YOU GET OUT OF IT: The purpose is to try to see if the visual design has introduced any usability issues. WHAT YOU GET OUT OF IT: All the insights you need to improve your site. It helps to be well organized and to enjoy talking to strangers. Some people are very good at it, and some actually enjoy it. And like all the other parts of the process, you want to keep it as simple as possible. When it comes time to figure out who to recruit, almost everyone instinctively has the same idea: Naturally, we need to test people who are just like our target audience. Representative users! Real users! This seems eminently reasonable. So why test with them? For instance, real estate brokers know a lot about mortgages, property taxes, zoning, and so on. Obviously, there are cases where domain knowledge and experience matter. But even where domain knowledge matters, it can be a tricky thing. But you also want first-time buyers to be able to use your site.

For instance, years ago I was doing a usability review of a product designed for real estate agents. They told me that every agent knew this term and used it often. Later in the project I paid the agent who had sold us our house to do a quick usability test for me. But there are many things you can learn by watching almost anyone use it. Instead, try to make allowances for the differences between the people you test with and your real users. When a participant has a problem, just ask yourself: Would our users have that problem?

Almost everyone agrees that there are diminishing returns from having more users do the same tasks: the more users you watch, the fewer new problems you see. Testing with just a few users makes it easier to do more rounds. Prioritizing and triaging them becomes a problem in itself, another process to manage. These are the same people who recruit participants for focus groups, and the process is exactly the same. Where do you find them? The first thing you need to do is think about where to look for the kind of participants you want. For instance, if you want to test with senior citizens, consider senior centers, [ 44 ] recruit loosely and grade on a curve libraries, and church groups.

If you want users of your product, try user groups, SIGs, and trade shows. You may even want to do testing right at a show. If you want people who use your Web site, put a link on your Home page or create a pop-up invitation that appears when they enter or leave. Testing with people who work for your own organization is tempting. In a large enough organization, you may even be able to find people who more or less match the profile of your actual users. But chances are they know too much. But there may be people internally who know very little about it—people who work on completely different products or divisions, administrative staff, receptionists, people in finance or HR. It will take about an hour of your time at our offices in the Belmont area. Scanning dozens of emails is much more efficient than listening to dozens of voicemail messages, and the people you want to recruit will all have email.

Where do you put it? Wherever you think people will see it. In recent years, people seem to have had a great deal of luck using Craigslist to find participants. This means getting on the phone with them and having a brief conversation. Believe it or not, some people will stretch the truth to make a few dollars. Are they articulate? Follow up As soon as you get off the phone, send your recruit email that confirms the appointment and gives the details: when, where, and what. In cases like these, a gracious letter not an email of thanks will do. Some people will be very happy with some kind of tangible memento—a mug or a T-shirt or one of your products. But most of the time you need to offer people some reasonable compensation for their time, which includes the time it takes them to get there and home again.

I like to offer people a little more than the going rate, since it makes it clear that I value their opinion, and people are more likely to show up on time, eager to participate. Each method of payment has its own problems. If you give people cash, you have to get the cash, keep track of the cash, get receipts for the cash, and so on. Probably the easiest solution all around is gift certificates. Amazon and AMEX seem to be the most trouble-free and popular. This might be someone you know who works for another company in the same building as yours or someone who works in another department. Can you use the same participants again in later rounds of testing?

For the most part, no. But you can use them on another site or another application. Pass them along to other teams in your organization. I get the general idea, but I feel like I need more advice. All of the general books on usability testing in my recommended reading list page — have very good sections on recruiting. But if you really want to dig in on the topic, Jared Spool and Jakob Nielsen have both published excellent reports about how to do recruiting page Book an appointment online. Find a gynecologist. Cancel an appointment. You need to book a physical therapy appointment for your year-old son. You are getting very drowsy. Find It needs to be after school, and he gets yourself a cup of coffee out at 2 pm.

Book the appointment online. First, come up with a list of tasks The first step is to jot down a list of the most important tasks that people need to be able to do on your site. Try it right now. Get a sheet of paper. Make a list of five to ten of the most important things people need to be able to do when using your site. Sign up for my workshops. Read a sample chapter of my book. Buy my book. Find out about my consulting services. Still waiting. Because if you are, you really should try it. This is one thing they tend to agree on. You might just have one long task or as many as ten. People will work at different speeds, so you always need to have extra tasks for people who finish early. Your choice of which tasks to test is based on a number of factors: What are your most critical tasks? These are the things that people must be able to do. Things that you suspect people are going to have trouble with. That may confuse people. What does your other user research suggest may not be easy to use?

Have you asked customer support what kinds of problems they hear about frequently? What red flags do your Web analytics raise about possible problems people have using your site? The scenario is like a card you might be handed for an improvisation exercise in an acting class: it gives you your character, your motivation, what you need to do, and a few details. Apply for admission to the program. If you do, you turn the task into a simple game of word-finding. You will usually want to instruct the participant not to use the search feature when doing the tasks.

The purpose is to ensure that the scenarios are clear, complete, and unambiguous. This is a case where you can definitely use almost anybody as a participant—in fact, this is a perfect time to use friends and family. Each one should be on a separate piece of paper, in fairly large type. I find that the easiest way to do this is to print two on a page, then cut the pages in half. Plan a trip, involving 30 stops. Register to receive information about your IRA. But I am a fan of things that work, and in some contexts checklists work really well. On the day of testing in particular, having a checklist gets these mundane details out of your head so you can be more relaxed and give your full attention to the participant.

For instance, you may have to requisition the money for incentives a month in advance or order lunch for the debriefing from your in-house catering service several days ahead of time. DeMille was filming a hugely expensive scene involving chariots, collapsing fiery towers, and thousands of extras, all shot in one take with a dozen cameras. I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me. The participants have to figure out how to use the thing on their own. So, what would you do next? The computer can be almost any laptop or desktop PC or Mac. That way you can have the screen sharing and recording software fully installed, configured, and tested and know that no one is going to uninstall it or change your settings. The screen recording software is used to capture a record of what happens on the screen and what you and the participant say.

Looking around for some wood to knock on. The screen sharing software allows the people in the observation room to see and hear the test. There are many options to choose from; some require a paid subscription and some are free, and almost all of them have free trials. If you work for a large company, they may already have a license for one of them. WebEx seems to be a corporate favorite. Personally, I use GoToMeeting. And it has VOIP capability built in. b A monitor and a keyboard. A 17" monitor will make it easy for you to see the screen without having to sit too close to the participant. But, in practice, there is. Some people will find anything other than a mouse difficult to use.

d A USB microphone. Getting good-quality audio into the observation room is crucial. Straining to hear what the user is saying can be very tiring, and eventually people will take out their BlackBerrys or just leave. I recommend using VOIP voice over IP instead of a speakerphone if possible, because the audio quality tends to be much better. GoToMeeting includes VOIP service, or you can use a service like Skype. Even if the microphone built into your laptop is good, having an external mike allows you to position it so the observers can hear both the participant and the facilitator clearly. e A speakerphone. Even if you use VOIP, you should have speakerphones available in both rooms as backup.

Make sure that you have the phone number for the observation room. Make a short recording and play it back. The microphone volume setting should be turned all the way up since you and the participant are going to be relatively far away from the mike. It should sound like you hit it with a hammer when you play it back. Ask someone to step into the observation room for a minute and then start a screen sharing session and make sure that they can hear you clearly and see the screen. This will make it easier for you and the observers to follow what the participant is doing. Email, instant messaging, calendar event reminders, and scheduled virus scans are the most likely culprits.

Some people like to improvise these instructions from an outline so it will sound more natural, but I recommend using the script and reading it exactly as written. You probably already have a good idea of why we asked you here, but let me go over it again briefly. The session should take about an hour. This will be a big help to us. If you have any questions as we go along, just ask them. And if you need to take a break at any point, just let me know. You may have noticed the microphone. Also, there are a few people from the Web design team observing this session in another room. It just says that we have your permission to record you, and that the recording will only be seen by the people working on the project. Do you have any questions so far? Print the script out in large type so you can read it without having to stare too intently at the page, and try to look at the participant after every few sentences.

I only ask a few simple questions, and they serve three functions: OK. What do you do all day? Now, roughly how many hours a week altogether—just a ballpark estimate—would you say you spend using the Internet, including Web browsing and email, at work and at home? browsing—a rough percentage? Everyone can come up What kinds of sites are you looking at when you with answers to these browse the Web? questions, so it gets them started talking Do you have any favorite Web sites? about themselves. This makes it easier when they have to start thinking aloud. But to have this effect, you need to actually listen. I usually ask at least one question about their job, like what their title means or what their company does.

Ask them to explain it. Get the information you need to grade on a curve. This—plus the sense of the extent of their domain knowledge that you get from their reaction to the Home page coming up next —is usually all you need to decide how this person compares to your target audience. Just look around and do a little narrative. This is a realistic and important task, one that people do on their own whenever they come to a new site. If they click on a link anyway—and some people will—step in right away and ask them to go back to the Home page. Could you go back? And again, as much as possible, it will help us if you can try to think out loud as you go along. Why not just let the participant read it? Once they start a task, try not to interrupt any more than necessary. Have they completed the task? If they have, hand them the next scenario and start the next task. I actually think you learn less 7 from a miserable user. Is it causing the participant too much discomfort? How much time do you have left, and is it important to get on to some other tasks?

Unless this is the last task in the session, you always want to be keeping an eye on the clock. Are you still learning something? Very helpful. who I hope will identify himself, so I can give him credit Thanks, that was very helpful. Feel free to use your own judgment about how to use the time available for probing, though. You can also ask them to try doing a task again another way, or from a different starting point. How can you tell? That was exactly what we need. that each test session last only 50 minutes, not a Save the recording! full hour. To get the most out of each session, you need some time between tests to clear your head, gather your thoughts, and perhaps fit in a bio-break. Obviously this means that you only have 50 minutes for testing.

But always try to leave at least 10—15 minutes of down time between sessions. During the break, you should Make a few notes. It will all run together, even with three tests. Reset the computer. You want to restore everything to the state it was in before the test. Reload your sample data and clear your browsing history. Like a therapist, you need to remain neutral. You say the same few things over and over. You have ethical responsibilities. For the people who tend to forget to verbalize their thoughts, though, you have to decide how often you should prompt them. The worst case is when the facilitator is actively trying to advance a personal agenda, either consciously or unconsciously. As facilitator, you have a responsibility to be aware of your biases and scrupulously steer clear of influencing what happens during the testing.

made you think that? Clarifying for observers. If the user makes a vague reference to something on the screen, you may want to do a little bit of narration to make it easier for the observers to follow the action. Like anything to do with ethics, this responsibility can be complicated, but I like to think it boils down to this: Participants should leave the room in no worse shape than they entered. Perhaps especially if they turn out to be a pain in the neck. The participant always has the right to stop the test and leave at any time without penalty. You still pay them. One of the best ways to do this is to avoid using identifying information. And if someone makes a particularly indiscreet or even incriminating statement, you should delete that portion of the recording. But you can probably make a very good case that informal usability tests like this are not the kind of study that your IRB has to oversee.

People have managed to get this kind of exemption in the past. I was once testing a site with some college students at a Catholic university, no less and asked casually what kinds of sites a participant used. I left this clip out of my presentation. And then there are the less-than-perfect participants… 10 You may get a slow talker, a no-talker, a low-talker, a fast talker, a nonstop talker, a know-it-all, or even fortunately, very rarely the occasional wacko. Keeping some participants on task can feel like herding the proverbial kittens. Some people will want to talk about the economy. As with kittens, you need to be polite but firm and keep them moving. Even after you get them back on track, some will relapse. Bite your tongue but be patient. Someone who seems hopeless may come around and end up providing you with really valuable insights. For instance, you may have someone who is clearly not qualified. If you feel the need to end the session early, you can use any plausible and hopefully convincing excuse, thank them, pay them, and get ready for your next session.

Here are two things that can help minimize any stage fright: Practice reading the script aloud. First read it out loud with no one around four or five times, then read it to one or two people: a family member, for instance, or co-workers. Do a practice test with no pressure. FAQ Who should be a facilitator? Probably you. As the person most interested in usability, your notes and observations are usually the most valuable. Where should I sit? Next to the participant? Behind him? Pre- and post-test questions are often used to try to assess things like whether people find the site usable and whether using the site improves their opinion of your organization or product.

For one thing, the samples are too small to have any meaning. All the time. Or it may just be that people [ 88 ] mind reading made easy You recommended Camtasia. What about Morae? Some years ago, so many people were using Camtasia to record usability tests that the folks at TechSmith decided to build another product specifically designed for usability testing: Morae. I think of it as Camtasia on steroids. It has a ton of additional features, including a logging capability which makes it easy for an observer to take notes that are synched to the recording. And it has its own remote viewer which eliminates the need for a separate screen sharing solution.

In the meantime, you may want to download the day free trial and learn what it can do. If you have good quality audio, observers can almost always tell what the user is feeling from their tone of voice. have such low expectations that your site seems no worse than most. Or, in maxim-speak: Make it a spectator sport. Because, when it comes to usability testing People often go into their first test with some skepticism, but they almost invariably come out Most people think that all users are just like them when it comes to using the Web. This profoundly and permanently changes your relationship to users, making you a better developer, designer, manager, or whatever you are.

And when you attend a session with others, you also benefit from the shared group experience and the opportunity to compare observations during and between test sessions. Whatever the reason is, believe me: it pays to get people in the room. But you want to make a point of inviting and encouraging everyone to attend: designers, developers, product managers, bosses, marketing people, writers, editors, and all the various stakeholders who have interest or influence in the design and content. A few things that tend to work: Make it easy for people to attend. Make sure they understand that attending tests gives them a voice in the debriefing where these things are decided. Trick executives into coming. I always tell people to do whatever it takes to get people from management to attend. Tell them that it will be good for morale if they could just drop by for a bit.

Dilbert notwithstanding, these are usually smart people who recognize the value of this kind of input once they see it firsthand. Provide quality snacks. Word will get around. What do observers do? At the end of each session, write down the three most important usability problems they saw in that session. Enjoy the snacks. Come to the lunchtime debriefing session. Each of the three sessions will last about 50 minutes, with a minute break in between. To get as much as we can out of these tests, we need your help with a few things: Take notes. Make a list at the end of each session. During the break between sessions, use the attached sheet to jot down the three most serious usability problems you noticed in that session. Come to the debriefing. Free lunch! Stay as long as you can. We know you have other commitments, but there are only a few sessions, and each one will offer different lessons. Even if you start to lose interest, try to keep watching and listening—you never know when the participant will say something revealing.

You can come and go if you need to, but please try to do it unobtrusively Try to avoid distracting others. Following a test can require concentration. If you need to have another kind of discussion or answer a phone call, please step outside the room. Thanks for your help! Participant 1 1. Participant 2 1. Participant 3 1. If you outgrow the conference room, you can use a training room or a small auditorium— anywhere that people can see the screen and hear the audio. One important consideration: the observation room and the test room should not be right next to each other. Very bad. From test room page 65 So, what would you do next?

d e a Computer b Projector c Speakers d Snacks e Speakerphone [ 96 ] make it a spectator sport a A computer with Internet access and screen sharing client software. b The image from the projector or large screen monitor needs to be large enough and bright enough so everyone can follow what the participant is doing. People sitting farthest from the screen will often find it easier to watch the session on their laptops, but you have to be wary of people drifting off into the world of email. c A pair of powered speakers. For the same reason you want a good microphone in the test room, you want good speakers for the observers. d Snacks. One excellent way to make the observation room pleasant and inviting so people will want to come back is to provide food.

Think of them as a lure: What kind of food is most likely to attract the Web team at 9 a. Bagels and muffins are usually a good bet, but you should follow the local customs. If your team is partial to granola bars and Twizzlers, give them granola bars and Twizzlers. You should have a speakerphone available as a backup, and make sure that you have the phone number for the test room. Make sure that everyone gets a copy of the handouts as they arrive: Instructions for Usability Test Observers The test script The scenarios for the tasks the participants will be doing Make sure everyone can see and hear the test.

Remind people to step outside if they need to take phone calls. Usually all you have to do is make eye contact with them and point to the door—with a smile, of course—as they put the phone to their ear. As soon as each session ends, remind everyone to go back through their notes and jot down the top three problems they noticed during the test. In front of their peers and perhaps their bosses, no less? And I think the problems we saw are quite fixable. Most participants are perfectly capable of ignoring an observer or even two or three in the same room with them.

And make it crystal clear to the observers that they must follow some rules: Be quiet. Turn off your cell phone and speak only when spoken to. Even then, keep your answer short and only answer the specific question that was asked. Maintain a poker face. No frowning or smiling and no laughing unless the participant says something clearly meant to be funny. And above all, no sighing. No nodding or grinning when they do something right, for instance. But it really is one of the best ways to ensure that people will come to the test sessions. An hour is probably a good length for the meeting. All sites have usability problems. All organizations have limited resources to devote to fixing usability problems. Therefore: 5. You have to be intensely focused on fixing the most serious problems first. And six months from now. How do you know which problems are the most serious?

Determining severity is always a judgment call. Problems that are going to cause a lot of people a lot of trouble are no-brainers. The toughest decisions involve corner cases very damaging problems that affect only a few users and ubiquitous nuisances things that affect a lot of people but are really only minor annoyances. How to run the debriefing meeting The person running the tests i. Begin by explaining how the meeting is going to work. Ask everyone to review the list of problems they wrote down during the test sessions and choose the three that they think are the most serious. Go around the room and ask people to read their three problems aloud. A wonderful word.

Write them all down on an easel pad,3 taping sheets up on the wall as they get full. Leave some room between items so you can add variations suggested by others. When everyone has had a chance to contribute their three problems, look at the list and choose what seem to be the ten most serious. Then wait for any objections and make changes if necessary. Write down a new rank-ordered list of these top ten problems, starting with the most serious. Again, use your own judgment about the order, but listen to any reasonable suggestions about changes. Working down the list without skipping any, have the team discuss briefly how each problem can be fixed within the next month.

Try to keep the proposed fixes as simple as possible see Chapter Focus on the most serious problems. Acknowledge every contribution. No belittling allowed. The point is, since these are some of your most serious usability problems you should be doing something about all of them. And even if it does come to pass, estimates of when it will happen are almost always optimistic. In the meantime, the problem exists and will continue to cause your users grief. By short, I mean it should take no more than two minutes to read—and no more than 30 minutes to write. Think bullet points, not paragraphs. FAQ Are there other ways to run the debriefing? Yes, there are many ways to skin this particular cat. Do whatever works in your context. No, you can and hopefully will fix many other usability problems based on things you noticed during the tests. Feel free to keep your own list of problems and fix them yourself or pass them on to others who can fix them.

The purpose of the debriefing, though, is to make sure your finite resources are focused on the most serious problems first. What were you doing there? Working for the District Attorney. Doing what? As little as possible. Or in some cases, another coat of lipstick. We can live with it until then. Maybe you can live with it in the meantime, but what about your users? And what if the redesign gets delayed—or canceled? And there can be something distasteful about implementing a lot of temporary fixes, patches, and workarounds. These are the WORST problems. You either have to make time or find a simple, elegant way to reduce the impact of the problem on your users. Take something away. I said it should keep people from having the problem you observed.

Tweaks cost less. Tweaks require less work. Small changes can be made sooner. Small changes are more likely to actually happen. A redesign means making a lot of changes at once, with the attendant complexities and risks. A redesign means involving a lot of people in a lot of meetings. Enough said. The idea of a redesign can be very seductive in the abstract: it promises a new lease on life, a chance to start over and do it right this time. So what are tweaks, anyway? If only there was some quick way to look up something like that…. Oh, wait: A tweak is a slight adjustment or modification, often one that requires a few rounds of trial and error to get it exactly right. Usually Web site tweaks involve making something more prominent by changing its size, position, or appearance, changing some wording, or just moving things around. Try a simple tweak first: the simplest change you can make that you think might solve the observed problem for most people.

For instance, if you tried making something larger, try making it a little larger. Always keep an eye out for unintended consequences. Does it seem like your change has thrown something else out of whack? But very often the best way to fix a usability problem is to do just the opposite: take something away. Remove something from the page. If your first impulse is to add something, you should always question it. All-at-once, redone-from-the-ground-up redesign? For a while periodic redesigns were considered a necessity, just like new car models every year. But the current trend seems to be away from wholesale redesign and toward phased, continuous redesign. How do you know if your tweaks worked? Do you retest the same tasks the following month to make sure? I used to think retesting your fixes was always necessary. But the truth is, not an awful lot of retesting goes on and not a lot is necessary, because you can usually tell just by looking at it that the tweak is an effective one.

Usually it will be obvious that the new, improved version is better and fixes the problem. com page — Submit the URL of the tweaked version and the relevant task and pay for one or two users to try doing it. Using something like Google Website Optimizer available free as part of Google Analytics , you can run a test that sends half of your site visitors to the original page and half to your tweaked version. Then it allows you to see, for instance, whether more people who used the tweaked version actually got to whatever target page you intended them to get to. Say hello for me when you see them.

It's been known for years that usability testing can dramatically improve products. But with a typical price tag of. English Pages [] Year ; DOWNLOAD FILE. In How to Make Things Happen, we learnt that knowledge is the fundamental driver of service efficiency. In this new book. This fully-illustrated, highly-informative, and fun primer presents a whole new way to know and enjoy any type of coffee. Many corporations are finding that the size of their data sets are outgrowing the capability of their systems to store a. A comprehensive collection of delicious, nutritious homemade recipes. Country Cooking Made Easy offers a wealth of healt.

Do You Want To Learn Electronics? Without The Right Guidance, Learning Electronics Can Seem Daunting. Electronics Made E. Table of contents : Cover Page 1 Contents Page 5 OPENING REMARKS: Call me Ishmael: How this book came to be, some disclaimers, and a bit of housekeeping Page 17 CHAPTER 2 I will now saw my [lovely] assistant in half: What a do-it-yourself test looks like Page 27 CHAPTER 4 What do you test, and when do you test it? Page 35 CHAPTER 5 Recruit loosely and grade on a curve: Who to test with and how to find them Page 43 CHAPTER 6 Find some things for them to do: Picking tasks to test and writing scenarios for them Page 61 CHAPTER 8 Mind reading made easy: Conducting the test session Page 67 CHAPTER 9 Make it a spectator sport: Getting everyone to watch and telling them what to look for Page 95 CHAPTER 10 Debriefing Comparing notes and deciding what to fix Page CHAPTER 11 The least you can do™: Why doing less is often the best way to fix things Page CHAPTER 13 Making sure life actually improves: The art of playing nicely with others Page CHAPTER 14 Teleportation made easy: Remote testing: Fast, cheap, and slightly out of control Page CHAPTER 15 Overachievers only: Recommended reading Page Sample test script and consent form Page Acknowledgments Page Index Page L Page S Page W Page com To report errors, please send a note to [email protected] New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education Copyright © by Steve Krug Editor: Nancy Davis Production Editor: Lisa Brazieal Copyeditor: Barbara Flanagan Design and production: Allison D.

Cecil Illustration: Mark Matcho Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact [email protected] peachpit. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it. Trademarks Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks.

Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book. ISBN ISBN call me ishmael To my Aunt Isabel Sister Rose Immaculata, O. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. And… I could probably write a pretty good book explaining how to do it. There was just one small problem, though: I hate writing.

More like red-hot-pokers-in-your-eyes agonizing. Then three years ago, Why do they What are need my zip code after a lot of pondering, I you thinking? to send me email? finally figured out how to do a workshop that would teach people to do their own testing—including some hands-on practice— in one day. I changed the format so the whole day was about the topic of this book: doing your own usability tests. September September September After teaching this new format for a few years, I understood a lot more about what people needed to know. And having watched a lot of people learn to do it, I was even more convinced of the value of do-ityourself testing.

I highly recommend it. After all, there are only so many people who can afford a day-long workshop. I like to think that reading this will be a pretty good substitute. September Does the world really need another book about usability testing? And there are several excellent books available that explain in detail how to do a usability test. Some of you will get really interested in it and go on to learn everything there is to know. Chapter 15, Overachievers Only, is meant for you. Unlike the other books about testing, this one is about finding and fixing the problems. Chapters 10 through 13 explain how to decide which problems to fix and the best ways to fix them.

Amateurs will do a good job, which will take work away from professionals. Before I try to address these concerns, let me make one thing perfectly clear: If you can afford to hire a usability professional to do your testing for you, do it. In addition to having experience designing and facilitating tests, a professional will have seen the same usability problems many times before and will know a lot about how to fix them. And for the price of the testing, you tend to get an expert review thrown in for free, because the professional will have to use the thing to figure out how to test it. And in most cases, I suspect it would be the result of someone pretending to do unbiased usability testing while actually manipulating the process to push a personal agenda.

And I also doubt that testing by amateurs will take work away from professionals. Senior professionals, he said, should be doing really sophisticated things like international testing and developing new 5 Best estimates seem to be that there are roughly 10, people worldwide who would identify themselves as usability professionals, and only a fraction of them do testing for a living, while there are, at last count, umpteen billion Web sites. You do the math. If you end up deciding to really pursue usability, I highly recommend their annual conference. So I would argue that if more people are doing their own testing and more people are observing those tests , there will end up being more work for professionals, not less. For life-or-death situations, you want exhaustive, carefully designed, quantitative, large-sample, reproducible, scientific studies that produce statistically significant results.

Or at least I do. There are many ways to do most of this. com , with files you can download, like the demo test video and all the scripts, forms, and handouts in the book. These files are available to everyone, because I really do want as many people as possible to do their own testing. What are they? But for some reason, people seem to have a hard time remembering all of them. A few words of encouragement Four words, to be exact: You can do this. You may not have much or any support for this interest. Or you may have moral support, but no resources. All the people I know who have been doing usability tests for years still get a kick out of it and find them fascinating. So get started as soon as you can, keep it as simple as you can, and have fun with it.

Who let you in? The first book was about how to think about usability; this one is about how to do usability. People often test to decide which color drapes are best, only to learn that they forgot to put windows in the room. bout once a month, I get one of these phone calls: Ed Grimley at XYZ Corp gave me your name. Sadly, this is how most usability testing gets done: too little, too late, and for all the wrong reasons. Repeat after me: Focus groups are not usability tests. Focus groups can be great for determining what your audience wants, needs, and likes—in the abstract. Focus group testing? The kinds of things you can learn from focus groups are the things you need to learn early on, before you begin designing the site. Focus groups are for EARLY in the process. Opinion around the office is split between two different designs; some people like the sexy one, some like the elegant one. And the kind of research they know is focus groups. I often have to work very hard to make clients understand that what they need is usability testing, not focus groups.

You know too much.

Make sure that everyone gets a copy of the handouts as they arrive: Instructions for Usability Test Observers The test script The scenarios for the tasks the participants will be doing Make sure everyone can see and hear the test. No nodding or grinning when they do something right, for instance. about themselves. And above all, Life intervenes. You may even want to go ahead and fix some of the worst problems you discover. Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library. Go to an annual UPA conference and find out for yourself.

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