Basic Implementation of Usability Testing

You have done all the hard parts, planning, analyzing, and designing. Now comes the implementation of usability testing. Throughout the previous analyses, there were most likely several negative findings. So many that it may be difficult to implement the changes to fix them all. In fact, you may not want to regardless of budget or time issues.

Develop Priorities

The next step is to create a list of priorities on what needs fixing first. Look for simple easy fixes, or try finding the ones that can affect most of your users. Fixing a poor Terms of Agreement page hardly compares to poorly done new user form or confusing navigation bar. A common side effect of fixing the larger issues first is that lesser issues become resolved on there own.

Another reason you might want to hold off on making all the fixes at once is that it may be difficult to determine what new changes made, make the greater impact. It’s easy to see improvements if all you did was move a menu to the left instead of the right versus moving the menu, redoing the menu’s organization, and changing the header all at the same time. Take little bites. It could be that moving to the left did work better for your users, but now using another feature has become more complex. Maybe the fix needed to be not moving the menu, but reorganizing it.

Test Again

Now comes the fun and ongoing part. Test and test again. A site is never really ever done. Even the big guns like eBay, Microsoft, or Google are constantly testing. I have been lucky enough to participate as a test subject for Google’s Adwords and AdSense. It’s the advantages to living nearby that I got to participate at Google I guess. Don’t forget, testing is one of the most important steps to building a website, and if you don’t do it don’t expect much. I’m guessing not everyone will like it.

UCD is short for User-centered Design, and is an important part of developing a website. Quickly defined, UCD is designing a website that meets users needs. Are you building a website for you to use, or your users? When building a website, you should design with your target audience in mind.

It’s Not a Waste of Time and Money

As a business owner myself, I’ve learned to not spend money on unnecessary items, but I have also learned that sometimes you need to have a bigger budget before implementing something new. “Can’t I just build a website without doing all this testing?” Yes, you can. Will your site be effective? It might. Will you need to rebuild your site when you realize that the current version is the problem? Most likely. Will you rebuild your site doing it the right way the second time? You better, or you are just setting yourself up to fail again.

It’s not a waste of time or money if you do it the right way the first time. It’s the best way you can spend your time and money. Before you jump into building a website though you need to clearly define its purpose, similar to setting up a business plan. In building a site, while thinking UCD, here is a list of important things to consider.

Important Factors:
·    Sites primary objective
·    Who is the target audience and their web user skills
·    Potential tasks and goals of the user
·    How would the users expect the site to work
·    How easy will your site be for users

All of these items should be considered, plus any other additional items that you can think of when developing the site concept. The key here is “Who is this user?” and “How will they use my site?” Designing the UCD way is understanding your audience, working/testing with audience, and creating the best platform for your audience to succeed.

Where Do I Start?

Assuming you have clearly defined the important factors for your new site, knowing where to start on the design process could be the hardest part. Usability.gov has a great little flow char on just that, Visual Overview. Not all steps are required, but it does offer some great insight on what should be happening when developing a site while thinking UCD.

It’s all about designing with users in mind, then testing with users, and then finalizing with a site that you know users can benefit from. It’s what building websites is all about.