Usability Testing

User Testing

Most web projects start out as great ideas. Too many of them fail because of poor user experience.

If you don’t know how users experience your website, how can you expect it to succeed?

At Heraghty Internet Consultants, we believe passionately in usability testing.

What Are the Benefits of User Testing?

Testing with real users can help answer the following questions:

Is their experience on your website is good or bad?
Can they understand what the website enables them to do?
Can they perform the tasks they expect to be able to perform?
Can they identify and perform the tasks you want them to perform?
Are they having any specific problems on the website?

When Should We Test?

Testing before go-live is better than not testing at all. However, it’s important to test as early in the development life-cycle as possible. Testing early can nip potential problems in the bud, which would have become problematic and costly to fix later in the process.

In fact, we often conduct usability testing on prototypes - whether Wireframes, paper prototypes or electronic documents (e.g. graphic mock-up, PowerPoint mock-up).

Heraghty Internet Consultants also advocates repeat testing sessions throughout the design and development process. The more you involve users in the process of design and development, the better your site or application’s user experience will be.

How Many Users Will We Need?

Not many. Even testing on a handful of users will help identify the main usability problems.

Must Test Volunteers Fit the Profile of our Typical Users?
Not necessarily. It’s more important that the test volunteers are unfamiliar with your website or business; and that they are looking at the site with “a fresh pair of eyes”, as real users would.

What Is the Testing Process?

Heraghty Internet Consultants uses an observational, task-oriented method of usability testing, as follows:

1. Identify tasks that can be carried out on website or prototype
2. Recruit users for testing
3. Ask users to perform specific tasks on website, and to narrate their experience
4. Observe and record users actions’, narratives and feedback.

We typically record our usability testing sessions on video. In some cases, we may simultaneously record users’ on-screen activity (i.e. screen capture), depending on requirements.

What are the Deliverables?

Our Deliverables are: Video Documentation, Report with Findings and Solutions
We will document thoroughly our usability reports and findings, ranking issues by type and degree of severity where appropriate. We will also suggest solutions for each issue.

We will also deliver a copy of the video recording of the usability test sessions, so you may you review them to better understand the problems identified.