Web Usability Testing of Current and Prospective Students
This week we are conducting Web usability testing on the new site design with current and prospective students. We had two people from BarkleyREI on campus on Tuesday to test the new site with current students and we are testing prospective students at BarkleyREI’s headquarters in Pittsburgh throughout the week.
Before I get into it, I suppose I should explain what usability testing is and why we are doing it (and why it is really important). Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen describes usability testing as “a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.”
The aim of our usability testing is to evaluate the new Web site design and information architecture with end users. Up until this point we’ve followed industry best practices in developing our site strategy, the site’s information architecture, and in designing the user interface for the site. So each step of the way we’ve made numerous assumptions and usability testing allows use to get direct input on how real users of the site think and respond to the design, content, and how we’ve organized the site. Does the site meet it’s intended purposes, what is its ease of use (in particular sections or as a whole), are users in each group able to complete expected site tasks, are we seeing any trends from one user test to the next.