September 26, 2010 – 9:52 pm
The mission of this article is to explain unmoderated remote user testing (URUT) in a way that will hopefully help people better understand it. Obviously, we write from our own experience using UserZoom’s software technology and methodology, which includes about 7 years specializing in remote usability testing, a large number of remote testing projects, about [...]
September 15, 2009 – 12:30 am
This study presents a cross-user usability test approach and analysis technique that extends beyond merely identifying the existence of a usability problem to introducing an empirical basis for identifying the type of usability problem that exists. For experimental purposes, 60 users were tested with three levels of user-competency determined by experience in using: (1) computers, [...]
September 12, 2009 – 12:25 am
What does “bias” mean in usability testing? Is it bad? good? In between? What are sources of bias in usability testing? Which one(s) should we worry about most? How do we know our methods are any good? Especially when we all do things differently
Bias in Usability Testing (226 kb)
August 15, 2009 – 3:04 am
Abstract
Traditional in lab usability evaluation has been used as the ’standard’ evaluation method for evaluating and improving usability of software user interfaces (Andre, Williges, & Hartson, 2000). However, traditional in lab evaluation has its drawbacks such as availability of representative end users, high cost of testing and lack of true representation of a user’s actual [...]
August 15, 2009 – 2:52 am
Abstract
This paper presents the results of two studies comparing traditional lab-based usability testing and remote web-based usability testing of Web sites. Two sites were tested: an employee benefits site and a financial information site.
The remote tests used an automated technique whereby the users participated from their normal work locations using their normal browser, and there [...]
Designers are continuously engaged in elicitation of user data, prior to new product conceptualisation, as well as during the testing of prototypes. When such user data collection happens across different cultures, data is often collected and analysed ignoring the rich qualitative cues embedded in non-verbal communications such as gestures.
In cross-cultural situations, gestures can yield [...]
April 25, 2009 – 10:43 pm
You’ve spent several days setting up a usability test, recruiting the participants and running it. Then you’ve poured over the data. What next?
If you are writing up your dissertation then skip this paper. You’ll need to follow the rules of your university and every detail is likely to be important. But if you are [...]
Katre D. S. (2004). Experimenting with UniFace: A Tool for Remote Usability Testing of Icons, ACM-SIGCHI-SI National Usability Conference Easy 2004, Bangalore, India.
Experimenting with UniFace: A Tool for Remote Usability Testing of Icons (PDF)
How do you get the most out of an agency doing the recruiting? Write a great screener - and test it. How do you get a great screener? Here are a few tips.
Why your screener isn’t working
Summary
This article discusses how eye-tracking can be used to supplement traditional usability test measures. User performance on two usability tasks with three e-commerce websites is described. Results show that eye-tracking data can be used to better understand how users initiate a search for a targeted link or web object. Frequency, duration and order of visual [...]