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 scope of the study (the tasks and questions)


The scope is a difficult subject to tackle because stakeholders very often want to use a usability study to cover everything at once, and the UX researcher will have to scale the expectations down to a feasible scope. The scope is constrained by what can reasonably be asked of the participants within the timeframe of the study. A video-based remote usability study will have a different test duration than a survey-based one, for example. The budget also influences the timeframe, and subsequently, the scope. 

 

The goal will determine whether the study's scope should comprise the entire product, only certain functions of it, or even just individual screens. If the goal is to determine the usability status quo of a product, for example, then the scope will encompass the entire product, whereas comparing three design alternatives for a new feature will be restricted to that feature.

The goal will also help to identify which tasks are candidates for...