In design development, it’s always important to understand which of your decisions are right and which are wrong. It is crucial to test and get feedback about your designs from real users. In this scenario, it can be very helpful to use different usability methodologies and tools that will help identify design problems and solve them in the early stages of product development.
Remote usability testing
Remote usability testing is a new method for website and software system usability testing, which are becoming more popular. This kind of testing allows developers to conduct remote usability tests with real users who can use the system and leave their feedback about design and usability.
This approach allows you to put any person in front of your website or software system and get their feedback. You can ask this person to perform any task on your website or software system. When real users are completing tasks on your website, talking about their positive emotions and frustrations about the website’s design and usability, you can observe and record their behaviour using special tools and software.
There are a lot of different tools for performing this kind of remote usability testing at various price levels. Some remote usability testing companies hire people from around the world to perform tests from their home, office or other locations. These people only need a computer with internet access and good microphone and video recording to test different websites or software systems.
Other remote usability testing companies allow companies and businesses to test their usability and get valuable information from real users about their website and software systems. After getting feedback from real users and seeing their confusion or lack of understanding about how to complete a task, companies can improve aspects of their system, enhance the user experience and get more users.
Some of the tools for performing remote usability testing can be found at .
Our company, Diatom Enterprises, has already successfully applied remote usability testing to improve the usability of our clients’ websites and software systems. Please contact us for more details.
In-house usability testing
In-house usability testing means that a company has an internal lab for performing their own usability testing. Usually, this kind of approach is necessary for obtaining highly qualitative and reliable feedback from real users. Such qualitative feedback can help significantly improve user experience and attract more clients.
An advanced in-house usability lab is usually divided into two rooms. In the first room, participants test a website or software system. In the second room, observers attentively observe and analyze the behaviour of the test participants.
Test participants usually test a system or website following the tasks assigned by the clients and the research team. These tasks can vary; they may be questions about the system or consist of a very detailed review and testing of the system.
Test participants can be anyone. They can come from the company doing the testing or from the client side. Sometimes research teams prefer to invite completely new people to test the system – potential clients from the same field or random people from different fields. Which participants are invited to the test session depends on the goal of the software product and the preferences of the client.
If you need to perform this kind of qualitative and detailed in-house usability testing for your project, our company is ready to help you organize it and find the necessary testing team. Please contact us for more details.
Usability quizzes, surveys, live user feedback, etc.
Another way to test usability is by arranging user quizzes and surveys to get feedback about the website or software system. These user quizzes and surveys can include questions about design and usability, asking which design solution is better or more understandable for users, as well as other tricks that encourage users to leave the most useful feedback for improving design usability.
There are a lot of different tools, such as, that allow you to test your designs in the best and most affordable way. For example, these tools allow you to place a special feedback button on your website. By clicking on the feedback button, users can leave their feedback about the whole website or a specific element.
These usability tools can also help ask specific questions about your design elements. Real users can test these elements and answer specific questions about website navigation, colours, buttons, etc., providing feedback about what they think and how they feel.
Conclusion
Usability testing is a very powerful and useful tool for creating a user-friendly design. It helps identify problems in design and usability and finds appropriate solutions for these problems. If you need to improve the usability of your website or software system, we are ready to help you. Please contact us for more details.