Let's talk about usability testing - what it is, when to do it, and what to look for.

Usability testing is essentially testing how easy it is to use a product (or a feature) for a target group of users.

Often usability testing is done after shipping a product. But with the help of prototyping, usability testing can also be done before developing a product. That way we can be confident before investing our resources into development.

To test the usability of any product, we need to look for three things¹:

1. Effectiveness: Whether or not users can achieve their intended goal. For a single user, the result will be binary - a user either succeeds or fails to reach their goal through the product or the feature. But holistically, the result will be a percentage - 'x' percent of users could successfully reach their goal. As product designers, our goal is the bring that percentage as close to 100 as we can.

2. Efficiency: The time it takes for a user to reach their goal. The final result should give us an number of average time periods - on average, it takes a user 'y' seconds to reach their goal using the product or the feature. The less time it takes to reach the goal, the more usable the product is.

3. Satisfaction: Whether or not the users feel good about using the product. The result will be categorical - p number of people are delighted, q number of people are somewhat satisfied, and r number of people are not satisfied after using the product. Satisfaction is directly correlated with perceived usability of a product. The more satisfied a user is, the more usable the product is for the user.

#usabilitytesting #productdesign #designengineering

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Reference:

1. Oduye, A., 2020. Design Engineering Handbook. New York: InVision, chapter two.

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