Book Image

Remote Usability Testing

By : Inge De Bleecker, Rebecca Okoroji
Book Image

Remote Usability Testing

By: Inge De Bleecker, Rebecca Okoroji

Overview of this book

Usability testing is a subdiscipline of User Experience. Its goal is to ensure that a given product is easy to use and the user's experience with the product is intuitive and satisfying. Usability studies are conducted with study participants who are representative of the target users to gather feedback on a user interface. The feedback is then used to refine and improve the user interface. Remote studies involve fewer logistics, allow participation regardless of location and are quicker and cheaper to execute compared to in person studies, while delivering valuable insights. The users are not inhibited by being in a new environment under observation; they can act naturally in their familiar environment. Remote unmoderated studies additionally have the advantage of being independent of time zones. This book will teach you how to conduct qualitative remote usability studies, in particular remote moderated and unmoderated studies. Each chapter provides actionable tips on how to use each methodology and how to compensate for the specific nature of each methodology. The book also provides material to help with planning and executing each study type.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
8
What to Consider When Analyzing and Presenting the Study Results
Index

The test environment


While the previous sections were targeted towards ensuring that the study meets the expectations of the study sponsor, this section is about ensuring that the study participants can execute the test as smoothly as possible.

Some of the questions that need to be answered are listed below.

Which are the target devices for the study?

A website might be targeted at both large-screen and small-screen devices; a product might only offer a companion app for iPhones, and so on. These requirements must be documented and taken into consideration when recruiting the participants.

 

When testing websites, an additional question to ask is which browsers and browser versions are relevant; when testing apps, it's relevant to understand what ratio of smartphone operating systems reflect the actual customer base and should thus be covered. Study sponsors will always say that the app versions for the various smartphone operating systems are identical, but this is not always true. If the versions...