3 Goals of Usability Testing

March 05 12:00 2011 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

The study of user behaviour on the Web shows that they do not perceive the slow sites and sites with complex designs. People do not want to wait. Also, they do not want to learn how to use the home page. There are no such things as web-site training or instructions for the website. People want to grasp the functionality of the site immediately after a cursory scan the page for a few seconds.

From the point of view of some companies, usability testing is part of a larger effort to improve the profitability of products. There are many aspects to doing so, which in the end also benefits users greatly: design decisions are informed by data gathered from representative users to expose design issues so they can be remedied, thus minimizing or eliminating frustration for users.

Informing Design

The overall goal of usability testing is to inform design by gathering data from which to identify and rectify usability deficiencies existing in products and their accompanying support materials prior to release. The intent is to ensure the creation of products that:

Are useful to and valued by the target audience
Are easy to learn
Help people be effective and efficient at what they want to do
Are satisfying (and possibly even delightful) to use

Eliminating Design Problems and Frustration

One side of the profitability coin is the ease with which customers can use the product. When you minimize the frustration of using a product for your target audience by remedying flaws in the design ahead of product release, you also accomplish these goals:

Set the stage for a positive relationship between your organization and your customers.
Establish the expectation that the products your organization sells are high quality and easy to use.
Demonstrate that the organization considers the goals and priorities of its customers to be important.
Release a product that customers find useful, effective, efficient, and satisfying.

Improving Profitability

Goals or benefits of testing for your organization are:

Creating a historical record of usability benchmarks for future releases. By keeping track of test results, a company can ensure that future products either improve on or at least maintain current usability
standards.
Minimizing the cost of service and support calls. Amore usable product will require fewer service calls and less support from the company.
Increasing sales and the probability of repeat sales. Usable products create happy customers who talk to other potential buyers or users.
Happy customers also tend to stick with future releases of the product, rather than purchase a competitor’s product.