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Part III - A Variety of Usability Research Techniques
Usability research comes in many forms and varieties. It can be as simple as "peer review" a technique where the designer may ask a colleague, preferably from another team or someone not associated with the project, to comment on a design or section of a design with a fresh attitude, right up to complex integrated testing of for example, air traffic control systems with real flight controllers.
As mentioned the simplest form of evaluation is that of peer review. This could be very informal or could result in a more formalised change management procedure. The next level of testing might be that of a Usability Audit. In this type of research a Usability Specialist would assess a product against standard heuristics (or design rules of thumb) some of these have been published by Jakob Neilson and can be found on his site at www.useit.com. Usually a formal report would then be written with recommendations so improvements could be made to the product.
The most valuable form of research is user observation. This is also the most common type and is also referred to as usability testing or evaluation. Neilson has determined, through research, that between 5 and 8 participants is the most cost effective number of participants and our own research suggests 8 is the optimum number. This is due to the law of diminishing returns. Users should come from appropriate and previously outlined demographics. They would then be placed in front of the product and asked to complete given tasks that are representative of those they would want to complete with the product in the real world. The findings from the user observation would then be complied into a report again with recommendations to improve the product.
Next month we will consider the role of usability in benchmarking performance...
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