This post was inspired by Joe’s 5 Things. I had try contacting him about my contribution on 5 Things on Usability Things. No response from him.

1. What is usability testing?
Usability testing is a means to verify that a design meets the needs of a site or application user.
It provides feedback directly from the users.

2. Types of usability testing
Heuristics Evaluation or Expert Review involve assessing a websites or application usability against a set of principles or best practice guidelines.

Beside Jakob Nielsen Ten Usability Heuristics, ISO 9241 is also an alternative usability heuristics

Gold standard of usability testing is user testing.

3. Who to test?
It important to get the actual or intended user to do testing. Not designer or developers or even user representative. (manager of a call-centre)

4. What to test?
Usability test should focus

  • Can people complete the task?
  • How long do they take?
  • How many errors do they make on the way?

Focus on what people do, rather than what people say.

5. How many people to test?
Most usability problems can be detected by testing with very few participants. With 5 participants, you can catch 80% of usability problem.

If your website (i.e. a university library website) caters to diverse audience – undergraduate student, faculty staff, postgraduate student. You better off gather 5 participants from each group.