Category Archives: Usability Testing

How to conduct heuristic inspections for evaluating software usability

Heuristics are “rule-of-thumb” design principles, rules, and characteristics that are stated in broad terms and are often difficult to specify precisely. Assessing whether a product exhibits the qualities embodied in a heuristic is thus a subjective affair. If you inspect … Continue reading

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Focus groups as a usability evaluation technique

A focus group brings together a group of users or other stakeholders to participate in a discussion of preprepared questions, led by a facilitator. A focus group could be used as an usability evaluation technique if the group is shown … Continue reading

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Analytics as a usability evaluation technique

Once your product has been released, understanding how it is actually being used very valuable. Analytics refers to the use of instrumentation to record data on users’ activities, followed by the analysis the collected data to detect trends and patterns. … Continue reading

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Understanding the process of user interface design

Designing a user interface for a non-trivial product is a complex task. One traditional approach to designing and building software products was the waterfall model, where requirements are first gathered and written up in specifications documents. These are then handed … Continue reading

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How to conduct user observation sessions

Watching real users use your product or prototype is really the only way to truly evaluate whether your design is sufficiently usable and learnable. User observation sessions quickly reveal where users have problems figuring out your product. Let’s take a … Continue reading

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How to recruit users for usability testing

To conduct effective usability tests, you need to find real users whom you can observe while they use your product. If you have a consumer product intended for sale to the general public, you’ll need to make sure that your … Continue reading

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