Pemaquid Crunch: Web Design notes from Portland, Maine » Usability Testing

DIY Usability Testing

Rob — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:56:58 +0000

Even if you’re operating on a shoestring, it pays to do some usability testing to gauge the performance of your Web site. Here are some simple things you can do without hiring a pricey consultant:

Get some greenhorns. Recruit people who have never seen your site before. These people haven’t “learned” your site.
Give ‘em a mission. Sit ‘em down at a computer and give them a specific set of tasks to perform (buy a widget, find the map, browse the gallery…)
Talk it out. Have them talk out loud while navigating the site so you can hear what they are thinking.
Must. Not. Lead. It’ll be hard, but resist the urge to assist or offer clues (now that you’ve got them talking out loud, they’ll ask questions).
Fine tune. Make adjustments to your site based on the feedback.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

You may also want to video tape the sessions to easily record commentary and movement through your site.

Testing Web design concepts for color-blindness

Rob — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:38:53 +0000

Catching up on my required reading, I came across another useful post from Jeffrey Zeldman’s blog (as I often do) on tools to help designers predict how people with color-blindness will see their designs.

Details on each @ Zeldman’s site.

Adding to delicious….

Clicktale: tracking Web site usability

Rob — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:34:31 +0000

It’s official: we’re a Clicktale beta tester. We’ve set it up on a Client Web site that gets a lot of visitors to quickly gather data.

It records movies of a person’s visit to your Web site – you can see where the mouse goes onscreen, what links they click. Looks like it’ll be a useful tool for improving the user experience.