Validate and Deliver the Right Design Solutions with Real Data from Usability Testing

In the world of the web, digital strategy is key to a long-term, successful  business model. It touches nearly every aspect of the business strategy and should evolve alongside the user’s purpose. But what is the purpose in creating data-driven strategy and why is it significant to your business? The answer: to ensure longer-term digital sustainability and allow organizations to grow their web properties with more agility. The result can lead to stronger user experiences on the front end and stronger returns to the business on the back end. It also allows an organization to confidently predict behaviors or to make informed (and tangible) business decisions about their digital ecosystem. Data-driven strategies enables businesses large and small to connect with potential consumers and building meaningful strategies around those target users.  

USABILITY RESEARCH: ANALYZING AND VALIDATING USER BEHAVIORS

The ability to determine and predict your user’s behaviors, including how they'll react is incredibly valuable. This couldn't be more true when validating web proposed web solutions. So what is usuability research.  You may have heard it called usability analysis, studies or user testing. No matter the terminology, usability research in general refers to the evaluation of a website (or an on-page element) by testing with actual, target users who are likely to use the system in the real world. The goal in a usability test is to understand the real-time behaviors of users within an actual or proposed digital  ecosystem. The outcomes can be compelling and will help you to:

1. Identify and understand usability issues with interfaces,
2. Collect qualitative and quantitative data, and to
3. Determine the user's level of satisfaction with a product as intended.

Usability testing allows design teams to better understand the user’s real-world behaviors and empowers them to make meaningful, data-driven decisions that pairs the business’ value propositions with improved user engagements. This methodology also allows development teams to identify technical issues and resolve them on an on-going basis. 

 

The earlier issues  are caught and addressed, the less expensive the fixes are in terms of staff resourcing, impacts to business goals, and potential impacts to delivery schedules. The best thing about leveraging usability testing to mine actual data is the ability to adapt tests depending on your goal and intent. For example you may want to:

• Understand if users are successfully completing mission-critical tasks;
• Evaluate your user’s time curve, or the duration to complete a task efficiently or the time and effort to recover from an error;
• Identify any blockers users could be encountering and preventing them from progressing to the next task;
• Determine if users are leveraging the product as the business has intended;
• Understand the user's level of satisfaction either on the site in totality, by page, or even interactions with on-page elements;
• Evaluate the product’s resonance or memorability with user’s proficiency and use with interfaces;
• Analyze the overall performance to determine if it’s indeed meeting business and user goals.

Let's dive a little deeper into some examples of usability testing and research methodologies that might help you find and mine the right data.  

QUANTITATIVE USER RESEARCH

The quantitative research is data gathered about the user behavior in question indirectly, through measurements or instruments. Quantitative data does the job of answering the "how many" and/or the "how much" type of questions. Having this data identifies the biggest issue on a larger population.

• Success Rates +Time-on-Task Testing: used to quantify user effort and risk of interface failure.
• Tree Testing: used to measure the findability of elements within an existing and/or proposed information architecture without any influence from the interface design.
• First-Click Testing: used to evaluate the intuitiveness of buttons, links, and other on-page content without the context of the design.
• Prominence and Recalling Testing: used to determine what interface elements users notice, remember, and correctly interpret.
• Eye-Tracking Testing: used to measure where the eye is focused or the motion of the eye as an individual views a web page to understand where they are looking, how long they are looking, what parts they miss, etc.
• System Usability Scale: used to quantify feedback from users with a 10-item questionnaire that includes a ranking scale (i.e. 1 = strongly disagree, 10 = strongly agree). 

QUALITATIVE USER RESEARCH

The qualitative methods requires gathering data about the user behavior in question directly, through observation and direct communication with the participants. Qualitative methods answer the questions of "why" and/or the "how to fix". This typically allows for more candid, real-life responses that quantitative data, alone, may not be able to answer.

• In-Person Usability Testing: used for participants to perform tasks using the interface under moderated sessions to learn about users’ attitudes, beliefs, desires, and reactions to concepts.
• Remote Usability Testing: used to study the facilitator, observers, and participants around the world in their natural environment.
• Ethnographic Field Research and Analysis: used to study groups of people as they go about their everyday lives, how they interact with technology, and how the physical processes work together to help businesses address gaps and focus on the entire customer experience
• A/B Testing: used to study the live impact of competing design changes on key business metrics, the actual behavior under real-world circumstances. 

MULTI-FACETED USER TESTING

These multi-faceted testing approaches help us understand how the business' online presence can adapt to the constantly evolving online web space. They typically supplement a range of qualitative and quantitative data sets due to the overall nature of these tasks and how they are executed; answering questions like "how is my site performing?" and/or "can my business do better?". The data provides a benchmark for a business on where they rank during that timeframe.

• Multi-Platform Usability Testing: used to test the product on a set number of screen sizes to evaluate how well the design performs with user scenarios and adaptations to different platforms/devices.
• Iterative Design Usability Testing: used for iterative testing through several rounds of prototype refinement in order to create a solid foundation for a design
• Benchmarking & Competitive Testing: used to understand how your site is currently performing against competitors.
• Heuristic Evaluations and Expert Reviews: used to compare and evaluate the proposed and/or existing platform against accepted usability principles. 

EMBRACE DATA TO INFORM YOUR WEB STRATEGIES

Investing time and effort in aggregating meaningful user data will ensure highly functional systems are pragmatic and solve real-world problems for real users. Remember - research allows businesses to embrace change and recognize opportunities driven by the rapidly evolving user behaviors. It's not always apparent why users interact with systems in the way they do or the reasons behind it.  Having tangible, real-world data will empower your decisions and help to bring in a deeper level of value for your website and the folks coming to interact with it. If you have questions about this article or, you’d like get in touch, connect with us here or share your comments below.   Images illustrated by Lia Estrellado