In todays class we learnt about usability testing, what it is and how we can do it effectively to get the best feedback from our users. It is an essential part of UX design, as we need to test with our target user whether our product does what it is supposed to do before we take it further and build it. We are in the middle of the second diamond, in the midst of developing and delivering the product.
Usability testing is a lot simpler than it made out to be. It is just watching users and noting down what issues they face when they are testing your product. Letting users use the products for themselves gives us a more objective view of our design, and helps us understand if they can be used by real people. If we are designing the product, it is very easy to become numb to our design and we don’t see it freshly anymore. Because of this it is so important that we test with users who are seeing the product afresh. It is also a lot cheaper to make changes early on in the design phase, rather than when the product is being built or even already released.
The second part of todays class was actually doing usability tests ourselves and putting what we learnt into practice. We started by thinking about the the research goals that we wanted to focus on for the usability test. Using the Plant Co. wireframes we created in week 4, we wanted to test them to see how effective they were. The main research goal was to see how easy it was for users to navigate to the water levels screen. Next we had to create a scenario for the user to immerse themselves in while testing. Ours was: “You realise you have forgotten to water one of your plants, and you would like to check the water levels of it. How would you go about doing this?” Using the hemingway app, this statement got a good score and was ready to be used in a usability test. After prototyping the wireframes in Figma and getting our script, we were ready to take turns being the facilitator, participant, and observer. What we found from our test, was that people tried to click on the image of the plant first, instead of the tips button that we had at the bottom. This was useful feedback and showed that we should make the image clickable.
We then affinity diagrammed our findings from what the observers took notes on during the tests. What we gathered was that users had no issue navigating to the FAQs, as the question mark is a pretty universal symbol for help. One thing that users tried to do was press the water levels circle, and they done this expecting that it would show them previous days water levels or some sort of comparison feature. The main finding that we observed from the usability test was that people were trying to press the image, and most people done this as their first action instead of going down to the tips. This showed us clearly that the image could act as a button, and pressing it then took the user to another screen showing the tips.
Todays class was super practical and it was helpful not only learning about usability tests but also getting involved and doing them ourselves. I think that doing this in class has better prepared me for doing them in the industry and is good preparation for placement next year if I am involved in facilitating or observing one.